CityView Magazine

26 February 2021 "It's pitch black," said Allen, "and I'm trying to catch my balance. My eyes are open, but I can't see. And I'm struggling to stay upright. I keep reaching for my le arm to catch my balance. Finally, I look down on my le arm, and it's gone. My first thought was, 'My life has just changed forever.' en my next thought is, 'Oh, good, I'm not going to bleed to death' because I didn't have blood coming out of an artery. "Apparently, when the tank exploded, a piece of shrapnel cauterized the end of my elbow when it cut through it. Incredibly lucky. ere's this whole string of lucky things that happened that night," he surmised. His next thought – horrific: "I'm on fire." Allen called for Burnham, whom he sensed he could hear on the other side of the wall, to call 911 and grab the fire extinguisher. Unbeknownst to him, the wall into her bedroom had been blown down. at was why he was able to hear her. e explosion blew apart the garage and collapsed the bathroom wall where Burnham had been brushing her teeth. Because the floor of the garage was blanketed in debris, and he was unable to see, Allen found himself kind of trapped. His wife sprayed him with the fire extinguisher, dousing the flames. And with her help, by grasping her hand, he was able to scramble across the hood of her car. In the pitch black with a layer of smoke in the house roughly chest high, the couple worked their way through the kitchen, through the dining room and out the front door into the 18-degree temperature of the winter night. Allen soon laid down – fully aware he was about to go into shock – on a little rise at the end of their driveway. Wearing only his shoes, underwear and what little bit was le of a shirt, he braced for the extreme cold. "Everything was burned off," Burnham said. "He was just so much messed up." On a pain level, Allen recalled, it was akin to "a 15" on a scale of 1 to 10. "It was that intense," he said. "I could feel it. Best way I can describe it: You turn on your toaster oven and stick your hand in and hold it there to that moment where you can't stand it anymore and have to pull it out. at's what it felt like – at that point." Among the lucky things that occurred that night in his favor, a Life Flight helicopter was able to land about a mile away in front of the Seventy-First High School campus off Raeford Road. e ambulance drive would be a brief one. e fire department, too, was in the surrounding vicinity. Allen, a half-glass-full sort of guy, tried to maintain a positive outlook amidst a dire situation. "ere was something really interesting that happened while I was laying in the frontyard. ere was a fire department right up the road," he said. "So when I hear sirens, I know they're coming, and help will be on its way. I hear the sirens. at means the first responders are coming. ey'll get here, they'll triage me, they'll put me in an ambulance. at's the next thing. And I'm going to end up in the hospital. I remember when the first responder arrived, he was asking me what had happened and all that. I could hear in his voice he was very upset. "Apparently, I looked pretty bad," Allen continued, as atcher found a new place close by to plop down. "I was black from head to toe and pretty much hairless, from what I understand." Allen's arm was largely gone, he had a gash in his side, second- and third-degree burns covered more than 20 percent of his body, and the remainder of his body was covered in flash burns. "And so somewhere in there – and I always describe it this way because that's the way it happened – it's like a film strip," Allen remembered. "And this picture starts over here on the right. And this thought just kind of comes by the front of my brain and goes, 'You know. You can let go. And it will all be OK.' en off it goes to the le. "It was just this thought. "My next thought was, 'Oh, hell, no. It's not my day to die.' " As for Burnham, she ended up needing a dozen stitches across her nose and eyes, and there was glass on her chest and in her feet. "It felt like it took forever," Rick Allen said. "But it was only a few minutes." Just as it does in their daily lives, humor would play a key role in Rick 's recovery. "You go through life laughing or crying," he said. "I choose laughing. Humor is hugely important." Because he wanted his wife to know he was OK that fateful night, Allen came up with a story that he knew would get back to her and give Allen, shown here filming a tiger shark, looks for ward to returning to the undersea world of his beloved sharks and sunken shipwrecks this summer. Fascinating FAYETTEVILLE

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