5:45 a.m.
Soon firemen and civil defense disaster units from a half-dozen neighboring communities had gathered at the still-smoking hole that marked the site of the vanished crafts building . Within fifteen minutes , the disaster-trained crews had detected heavy radiation emanating from the crater and there was a scurry of men and equipment back to a safe distance , a few hundred yards away . At 5:30 a.m. , a plane landed at a nearby airfield and a platoon of Atomic Energy Commission experts , military intelligence men , four FBI agents and an Army full colonel disembarked . At 5:45 a.m. a cordon was thrown around both the hospital and the blast crater . In Ward 4-C , Thaddeus Funston slept peacefully and happily . `` It 's impossible and unbelievable , '' Colonel Thomas Thurgood said for the fifteenth time , later that morning , as he looked around the group of experts gathered in the tent erected on the hill overlooking the crater . `` How can an atom bomb go off in a nut house ? ''