Daina Bradley was inside the Alfred P. Murrah Building when the okc bombing tore through the federal building on April 19, 1995, and she says she never forgot the moment the room turned red. Bradley, who entered the Social Security office on the first floor with her mother, sister and two children, said she looked at the clock at 9:02 just as the blast hit.
“When the bomb went off, that whole room was red,” Bradley said, adding that everything seemed to slow before she blacked out. “All I remember after that, I felt myself going through the building.”
The blast buried Bradley alive under the rubble. She said rebar went through her ankle and leg, and she could hear her mother, children and sister screaming for help. Firefighters told her to keep screaming so they could find her. When rescuers reached her, she said they discovered she was in water because the cold-water pipes had busted, leaving one arm trapped in ice with a rock on top of it.
Bradley’s account captures the violence of the bombing in a way the casualty count alone cannot. Oklahoma City will pause two days from now to remember the 168 people killed on April 19, 1995, but her story shows what survival cost inside the building. She said rescuers had to take her leg to save her life, and that a pocketknife was used during the amputation.
The bombing killed 168 people and changed Oklahoma City in a single morning. Bradley said she knew there was only one choice: lose the leg or lose her life. “I can always get another leg,” she said. “I can’t replace my life.”
What lingers for her is not only the loss of her leg, but the sound of other voices fading. Bradley said it was worse to hear the screams of others stop than to lose the limb herself, a memory that still hangs over the city as it prepares to mark the anniversary of the attack.
