Teenage girls were planning their Saturday night out and trying on new clothes.
2.15 p.m. Omagh town centre is bustling. Saturday afternoon is normally the busiest time of the week anyway, but it's particularly hectic because a festival is taking place with floats and music.
There is a relaxed, joyous atmosphere in the streets. Dozens of tourists, including a Spanish party, have arrived to watch the celebrations.
Market Street is buzzing with shoppers, particularly women and children. Teenage girls are planning their Saturday night out and trying on new clothes, mothers are buying school uniforms for their children.
Damian Turbitt's hairdressing salon is full of women and children. Some fathers have headed to the Kosy Corner pub or other bars to get away from the shopping.
Other men are in the bookies placing a bet on the horses or the football. It's the start of the English Premier League and many are keen to get home or get to the pub to watch the matches.
2.30 p.m. A telephone call to a Belfast newsroom warns of a bomb at the courthouse in "Main Street" Omagh.
2.35 p.m. Security forces arrive at the area around the courthouse, which is at the top end of the town's High Street. They start evacuating people from the area and moving them to the bottom end of High Street, which runs into Market Street.
2.45 p.m. Hundreds of people have now moved into Market Street and are congregating at the bottom of Market Street and the Dublin Road. It's a busy shopping area, some 400 yards from the courthouse, where they think they are safe. The mood is still relaxed, although people are complaining about the inconvenience on a Saturday afternoon.
They chat to each other about the price of school uniforms, where they have been on their holidays, the awful summer weather at home and how they thought bomb warnings were a thing of the past. But no one is really worried. In one shop, staff are convinced the bomb warning is a hoax and refuse to evacuate.
3.10 p.m. A bomb explodes in a maroon Vauxhall Astra at the junction of Market Street and the Dublin Road. At least three buildings collapse. Dozens of people are buried. Others are blown to pieces in the blast. For a few seconds, there is silence as Omagh is frozen in disbelief. Then there is wailing and screaming, awful screaming.
3.15 p.m. Those who can still walk get up, and scramble wildly in the rubble for friends and relatives. The scene of devastation is horrific. Hands, arms and legs litter the road. A child lies dead in a shop window. Hundreds of people are hysterical. Parents are frantically searching for their children. Children are crying and yelling uncontrollably. A woman blown into air has landed holding her baby. There are bodies everywhere. It's difficult to tell the dead from the injured. The street is strewn with glass, debris and limbs.
3.20 p.m. People are arriving from all over the town in search of loved ones who could have been caught up in the explosion. They are stunned by the scenes. They don't know where to begin searching or helping. Some people can't face Market Street.
Nigel O'Kane, landlord of the Monument Bar, doesn't want to see "the dead, the dying and the injured". "I couldn't bear it," he says.
A woman in a wheelchair is screaming for help. Another woman walks dazed through the street, her arm hanging off. A pall of thick, black smoke rises from the carnage. The pavement is spattered in blood.
3.30 - 7.30 p.m. Bodies are carried out of the rubble on doors, boards, benches and other makeshift "stretchers".
A girl lies in the middle of the street, her leg beside her. A boy has half his leg blown off. It lies in the street with his shoe still on it. He is still alive. Eyewitnesses say he doesn't cry; he just sits there motionless. A water main has burst. Water flows over the bodies on the road.
Hundreds of people have joined the search. It seems as if under each large piece of rubble lies another body. The bodies are laid on the side of the road. They are covered with tarpaulin or plastic sheeting. There isn't enough to go round, so quilts, curtains and sheets from a nearby draper's are used. It is believed that at least six people are dead. There is an awful stench. It is the smell of burning bodies. People are saying the Last Rites over victims already dead.
SDLP representative Paddy McGowan flags down two buses to take the injured to hospital. "I've never seen devastation like it," he says. "I can't understand the mentality of anyone who could do this."
Others are taken to hospital in cars. Cars and two appropriated buses ferry the injured to hospital. Many of those cut by shrapnel refuse medical attention for their injuries. They don't want to waste time, they say. They must help those worse off.
Some RUC officers who have joined in the search break down crying. Their uniforms are thick with blood and dust. They say they have never witnessed such carnage in 30 years. Towels, coats and handkerchiefs are used to bandage the wounded. Ambulance crews and paramedics have joined the search. "I don't know where to start," says one, overwhelmed by the scene.
Word spreads that a baby and a pregnant woman have been killed. By now it is believed 12 are dead. Bodies are placed in bags, zipped up, and taken to a temporary morgue.
Hundreds of people are crying. A teenager hysterically searches for her parents who were shopping. A man knows his wife is dead but is praying that his children have survived.
Ambulances are taking the injured to Tyrone County Hospital, which is trying to contact all its staff to bring them in. Many have already heard the news on the radio and are making their way over. Four wards, normally closed at the weekend, are opened.
But the hospital, even with extra staff and facilities, can't cope with the scale of the carnage. British army helicopters are on their way to Omagh to fly others injured to hospitals in Belfast, Derry, Enniskillen and Dungannon. Urgent appeals are made for blood.
By now, it is believed the death toll is higher. Frank Pancock, an eyewitness, says he has seen 15 bodies and he thinks there are more. "I was walking through bodies. I can't even begin to describe it," he says.
The sounds of electric cutting equipment, ambulance sirens, and a burglar alarm which has been set off, mingle eerily.
The roads to the hospital are blocked with hundreds of cars.
People are desperate for news about relatives; others just want to give blood. The telephone lines in Omagh have come down. People have been trying to contact the town from all over Ireland and the rest of the world, and the phone system couldn't cope. Those outside the town have no way of knowing if their loved ones are all right.
7.30 p.m - midnight. By now it's known that at least 20 people are dead. A trail of blood leads up the steps of Tyrone County Hospital. Inside, there is blood everywhere - on the walls, on the floors, in the toilets. A local priest, Father John Gilmore, gives the Last Rites to casualties lying on mattresses in the hospital corridors. "I anointed them on the floor," he says.
One man says the scenes in the hospital are even worse than those in Market Street. A man whose son and wife were injured says he voted Yes in the referendum. "I'd never do it again," he adds. "There is no peace here." Hundreds of people at the hospital still do not know if their relatives are all right. Staff carefully go through lists of the dead and injured. For some families, there is relief. You can tell those who get bad news. Their faces crumple in devastation. Doctors and nurses are coping courageously but the injuries they see affects them deeply. Some take a quick break from their duties to cry quietly in corners and then go back to work.
A casualty field centre has been set up in the local leisure centre and many people have gone there. Damian Turbitt, the local hairdresser, is walking the streets. "I don't know what to do," he says. "I can't sit down, I can't settle. There were women and children in my salon just before the bomb. They headed off to the shops. I don't know whether my clients are alive or dead. I'm just waiting for news." At midnight, the word is that 25 people are dead.
2.30 a.m. Police say 28 people are now dead. Around 200 are believed to have been injured.
"Where in God's name is it going to stop?", says one woman.