Federal workers face date to move

By Jay F. Marks

Published: April 10, 2006

HUD employees have problems working close to the bombing site

Eleven U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development employees are facing an April 28 deadline to move into the new federal building.

The building opened in 2004 as a replacement for the one destroyed in the 1995 Murrah building bombing, and the workers are the last holdouts among hundreds of federal employees who already work in the building.

The workers have balked at the move, unwilling to relocate to offices adjacent to the site of a terror attack that killed many coworkers, but one veteran agency employee said their choices are dwindling.

Teresa Cook said they each received a letter -- dated March 23 -- denying their bid to stay at the alternate work site at 500 W Main St., where the department moved after the bombing.

"Someone has decided they don't want us there," the Choctaw resident said. "They don't want us there at any cost."

Some choices remain
Agency spokesman Jerry Brown said the employees have been asked to consider moving into the federal building so all employees are in the same place. No one is being forced to move.

Brown said employees who do not want to move still have options, although their initial requests were denied. They can appeal that decision or transfer to a department office in another state.

"We've been as compassionate as possible for 10 years," he said.

Brown said department officials hope to consolidate 100-plus employees to provide one-stop service.

Fifteen federal agencies have offices in the federal building, but the housing agency is the only one with employees working at another site.

Cook, a grant specialist, was not injured when a fertilizer bomb tore through the Murrah building on April 19, 1995, because she was working with Kaw Nation officials in Newkirk.

News of the explosion that resulted in the deaths of 168 people, including 35 who worked for the department, shocked her. She doesn't even remember driving home that day.

In the days that followed, Cook waited for word of survivors. Nine days passed before she received confirmation that her best friend had been killed, she said.

Then came the memorial services, stacked so close together she couldn't attend them all.

Cook, 49, said she never has been able to return to the bombing site. Panic attacks and heart palpitations set in if she even gets close to that part of downtown.

Cook's doctor has diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Considering retirement
If Cook can't receive the department's approval to continue working away from the federal building, she may have to opt for disability retirement.

That would leave her with only a fraction of her former salary and restrict her work with agency clients for a year, which she said would limit her ability to earn a living.

"They're really restricting what my alternatives are," Cook said.

She said she felt obligated to keep working for the agency after the bombing on behalf of those who died, but that has become less of an issue over time as none of the department's managers were around in 1995.

"They make me feel like I'm of no value to them whatsoever," Cook said. "I don't know what to do."