TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. -- Anyone who lived in Oklahoma on April 19, 1995 has a story about the day a Ryder truck full of fuel-oil explosives ripped the heart out of America.
The firefighters who arrived on scene at the Alfred P. Murrah Building and immediately started putting out car fires. Then the wind shifted, the oily black smoke cleared and they saw the defaced building for the first time and immediately shifted to rescue efforts, according to then-Assistant Fire Chief Jon Hansen, who became the bushy-mustached spokesperson leading the rescue effort. The doctors and nurses, who firefighters called “Angels” because their smocks and white coats flew out behind them as they ran down Robinson and Harvey Streets to help just minutes after the bomb went off. The military photographer, taking crime scene photos for the FBI who, days after the explosion, was asked by the rescue dog handlers to hide in the rubble so the depressed dogs could “rescue” a living person.
Tinker Air Force Base employees PJ Allen and Fire Dept. Maj. Brad Vance have their own vivid memories.
“I had just got off duty,” recalled Vance in a Tinker Talks podcast for the 24th Anniversary of the bombing in 2019. “I had just finished my shift on base and was going about my normal business of starting my day off and I felt and heard something and knew something bad had happened. I decided to head back into work. I knew it was that big.”
Allen was 18-months old, the youngest child in the America’s Kids Daycare on the Murrah Building’s second floor. Nineteen children were in the daycare that morning. Only PJ and five others survived as the six floors above them came crashing down.
“I have no recollection of the event or the time in the first few years,” Allen said. “My grandma (who raised him) tells me stories. I don’t have any recollection of when the wounds were healing. I was too young.”
Allen suffered second and third-degree burns over half of his body, a dislocated shoulder, severe head trauma and a collapsed lung, causing him to need a tracheotomy to breathe.
“I’m very appreciative that I wake up every day,” Allen said. “It’s just not something I take for granted. I know some people weren’t as fortunate to have had their loved ones come home that day.”
Outside, 12 firefighters on three firetrucks from TAFB, including Vance, were helping put out spot fires and scrambling over, under and around rubble to find victims, working 12-hour shifts over three days.
“I remember sleeping on a church step across from the Murrah Building, just trying to catch sleep where you can,” Vance recalled. “After about three days, a shift schedule was set up so first responders could get some rest."
Vance said once he was able to get home to his then-girlfriend (now wife), the emotion came out.
“She hadn’t heard from me for about a day-and-a-half when we got sent down. So, when we finally got hold of a cell phone to call and say I was ok, I remember breaking into tears and crying,” he said.
The Murrah Building bombing was one of the first large incidents where first responders and those working at the site were mandated to talk with counselors at the end of every shift.
Some of Allen’s vivid memories of the consequences of his injuries growing up include having to play outside after the sun went down because of his burns and getting breathing treatments because of his injured lung.
“I was a kid. I didn’t know any better,” he said. “I just normalized my schedule to make my playtime when the sun went down.”
He still gets treatments for his lungs and the tracheotomy damaged his vocal cords, causing him to speak in a soft, high-pitched voice, which he embraces.
“It’s my voice, it’s unique and I like it that way,” he grinned.
“A lot of people are different than they were that day,” he continued. “Hopefully, the survivors have all found their purpose and those friends and families who lost someone in that building, I hope they’ve found solace in their lives as well,” Allen said.
In an interview with CNN in early April, Allen said he and most of the other survivors from the daycare “pretty much grew up together.” Several of them went to Oklahoma City’s Bishop McGuinness High school together.
“Most of us get together once in a while,” he said with a smile. “We have a shared bond.”
Two Tinker Airmen were killed in the explosion while, coincidentally, in the Murrah Building Social Security Office at the same time. Airman 1st Class Lakesha Richardson Levy, 72nd Medical Group, was in the social security office to pick up her Social Security card. She was training to be a lab technician. Levy was known to always have a joke to tell and was said to have brought smiles to everyone she met. Airman 1st Class Cartney J. McRaven, 3rd Combat Communications Squadron, had returned from a four-month deployment to Haiti and had married Senior Airman Anthony McRaven four days before the bombing. McRaven was in the Social Security Office to report her name change.
Tinker sent more than 900 Airmen and civilians from more than 20 units to do anything they were asked to help with recovery efforts in the days and months after the bombing.
Today, Allen is 31-years-old and an avionics specialist, working on KC-135s in the Oklahoma City-Air Logistics Center. He’s been on the job a little over a year and says he loves it. And, he loves working at Tinker and said he has found his home and a way to give back to those who helped him 30 years ago.
“I wanted to give back,” he said. “My injuries wouldn’t let me join the military or the fire or police departments. When I was blown up, I know the Air Force was another organization that did a lot to help survivors. Working on my planes is sort of my way of helping out.”