THV Extra: A Titan II Tragedy Through A Survivor's Eyes

Gary Lay knew all about the Titan II missiles scattered throughout North Central Arkansas.

After graduating high school in 1965, Lay had a chance to pick up some extra cash before heading off to college as a contract worker at the silo north of Searcy in the town of Albion.

His first day on the job was August 9, a day he remembers just like it was today.

"All of a sudden, there was a big swish sound, kind of like when you light a gas stove," he explains. "And there were men down below hollering, 'God help me!' There was a lot of scurrying, a lot of clanking."

"Fifty-three guys go to work that day," he added. "Why me? Why did I get out of there?"

They're memories and questions still haunting Lay, even today, almost 45 years after the greatest tragedy in the U.S. Air Force's Titan II missile program's 25 year history. "You think about a lot of that."

Lay was 17 and had just graduated high school when his father approached him about working in the silo. "It was a great job. Money was pretty good. The temperature in the silo was 60 degrees when it was 110 outside. The guys were good to me; I met a lot of interesting people."

Lay worked cleanup for the construction crew brought in for a series of upgrades named Project Yard Fence.

"You know, I had been working in the bottom of that silo all morning, the very bottom," he said. "We had been in the bottom, came out for lunch at a quarter to 12, went back in at a quarter to one, and I stopped to visit with three or four other guys."

It was a conversation that saved Lay's life. At 1:10 p.m., a fire broke out in the silo, filling the hole with smoke and toxic fumes, knocking out the power.

"When the fire blazed up, it sucked the oxygen out," he said. "When it breathed again, it blew again. It actually blew three times."

Lay says instinct took over and he, along with a group of co-workers, first tried to escape by going down the ladder to a different level. "I just started back up the ladder."

Climbing back to where he started, Lay began feeling his way around the gun barrel.

"It was extremely hot," he said. "And I fell in the molten stuff from the fire because I couldn't see. When I got to the end of the cableway, I passed out."

Lay was rushed to the closest hospital in Searcy.

"And I think that was the longest ride I think I've ever been on," he said. "I was literally on fire from my standpoint."

"At the hospital, they were scurrying around because they didn't know if they had one patient coming, 10 patients coming or 50 patients coming."

Another worker, Hubert Saunders, also escaped the fire. His injuries, however, were minor compared to Lay's.

"It took more into the evening, as more and more reports came in, they realized there wasn't anyone else coming out of there," Lay said.

In the days that followed, Lay received treatment from Lackland Air Force Base's Burn Unit to relieve the pain.

"They sprayed me down with (burn treatment)," he said. "They sprayed me every day. And my mother couldn't figure out why I wasn't having any pain. She bent down to kiss me, and her entire mouth went numb. That's how strong the stuff was."

The Air Force says the fire started after a welder accidentally cut through a hydraulic hose, but Lay refutes that claim. "There wasn't anyone welding. I was there."

He believes the fire started from a ruptured hose leaking hydraulic fluid onto a power unit. But the reason for so many lives lost, Lay believes, came down to security, which he says became too relaxed as civilian crews came onto the missile bases.

"It got to where they knew these people," he said. "It got so lax that crews were going in without an escort. And the day it happened, there was not an escort down there."

Today, Lay is the owner of GWL Advertising in Little Rock. He doesn't show any physical scars from the fire, thanks to the clothes he wore at the time and the medical treatment from the Air Force.

However, he still has questions about what could have been done to save his co-workers.

"They were all good people," he said.

Within the past decade, Lay has begun speaking to historical societies about what happened that day. "It was an experience I'll never forget."

He's even spoken to family members of the men who died in the fire.

"It was good to tell them that they didn't suffer," he said. "Fifty-three guys go to work one day, looking forward to having dinner and seeing their families, and their life was over. They had no idea."

Lay has never been back to the site near Searcy. The only sign it ever existed is a memorial commemorating the date of the tragedy and a list of the names of the 53 men who died in the fire. A second memorial bearing the names of the fallen workers also sits at Little Rock Air Force Base.