dresses made by hand at Maggie’s Fabric Patch. 

This familiarity was, in fact, one reason people stayed in West and why young people who’d moved away returned. These prodigals, who might bring out-of-town spouses with them (known as Czech-mates), would likely have been homesick for the fluent Czech spoken among their elders and the casual phrases uttered around town ( pivos for “beers,” Jak se máš? for “How are you?”). Now they’d teach their children which residents in town went by the nicknames Pee-Wee and Poopsie, and they’d explain that Jimma Holecek, the slowest driver in town, was an animal lover whose chickens and cows were the most cared-after creatures around. (“If I’m reincarnated as an animal,” his wife was known to say, “I want to belong to Jimma.”) 

More importantly, they’d talk about dedication—the kind of dedication locals had shown twenty years ago when word spread that Vanek’s nephew needed a liver transplant and the town hosted an auction, a fried-chicken dinner, and bake sales to raise $90,000 for his family. The kind of dedication that meant people attended every baptism and wedding, and every funeral too, marveling at the way the cemetery grass was always neatly mowed, the graves cared for in such a way that even the oldest markers were decorated with flags and flowers. (Local retiree Robert Zahirniak swears that the graves are so well tended that a couple who was visiting West decided to relocate there upon seeing some of the grounds. “You can really judge a town by its cemeteries,” he explained.)

Volunteering to fight fires on behalf of the community was a natural extension of this same dedication. Risky though the job was, nobody was too preoccupied with how dangerous it could truly be. No firefighter had died on a call in West since Payne’s wife was a little girl and her dad had had a heart attack while fighting a fire. That was many years ago. The last time West had witnessed any sort of threatening disaster, in fact, was in 1896, at an incident later named the Crash at Crush. In a publicity stunt organized by general passenger agent W. G. Crush and attended by a crowd of 30,000 to 50,000, two railroad engines were sent roaring toward each other. Just before the trains met, the engineers jumped to safety, but the collision was followed by something no one had anticipated: both boilers exploded. Three bystanders were killed; others were burned and injured by flying debris.

Mimi Montgomery Irwin, the owner of the Village Bakery, kept a photo of the event on the wall and would often tell the story to customers. “That’s the only thing that has happened here in one hundred and sixty years,” she’d say.

Robby Payne had silenced his fire department pager before going on a golfing trip with Kirk Wines and Tommy Muska in early April, then forgotten about it after he returned to West. But the night of the fire, word that the plant was ablaze spread quickly through town, and around 7:30, the funeral director and longtime volunteer received a call with the news from his stepfather-in-law. “I’m on my way,” Payne said.

Since he kept his bunker gear at his house, Payne grabbed it and drove straight to the scene, watching the smoke balloon above the buildings like puffy gray pillows. Spotting a group of firefighters, he parked and walked up to a big red pumper truck the department had named Nick, after Muska’s son. “Is Cody here?” Payne asked, referring to their fellow volunteer Cody Dragoo, who was a plant foreman. Yes, he had already driven in, came the reply. Dragoo would be helpful, Payne thought. He’d be able to tell them where the ammonium nitrate was stored and how worried they should be about a possible anhydrous ammonia leak. 

The team was forming quickly: C. J. Gillaspie and a relatively new fireman named Eddie Hykel in Nick the pumper. Morris Bridges and Joey Pustejovsky in another pumper truck. The Snokhous brothers in the grass-fire truck. George Nors Sr., solo, in the tanker. An ambulance also arrived, as did the firefighters who’d driven straight to the scene in their own vehicles: Dragoo, nursing home maintenance man Emanuel Mitchell, and precinct constable David Maler. Other volunteers from the force—Hank Heemels, Marty Marak, and Judy Knapek—showed up too, positioning themselves a bit farther back from the blaze. 

Additional help began to arrive. Kenneth “Luckey” Harris, a seasoned Dallas fire captain who lived near West, showed up after he saw the fire from a friend’s house; though he wasn’t a volunteer in the West department, he figured he could offer his expertise. Jimmy Matus, who lived near the plant and whose company had built the fire trucks, came to assist, as did his cousin Kenneth. William “Buck” Uptmor, who owned a pipe and fencing business, and his employee Chilo Rodriguez had been moving some horses out of a nearby field and headed over to offer the crew a hand. And from the EMS building, where a class had been wrapping up a basic emergency medical technician course, students Perry Calvin, Jerry Chapman, Cyrus Reed, and Kevin Sanders—all firefighters from the outlying areas—also made their way toward the blaze. Fearing a leak of the anhydrous ammonia, the rest of their EMT classmates began an evacuation of the neighborhood. 

The first firefighters on the scene had arrived only four minutes after the initial call came in, at 7:28. Nine minutes later they were calling the surrounding departments for backup. Their initial worry was access to water. The guys on the southeast side hooked a hose up to the closest hydrant, two hundred yards away, near the high school football field, but as they were unreeling it toward the fire, they realized it was too short. Gillaspie was planning to pull the hose off another truck just around the time that Payne and some of the other guys, concerned about the increasing size of the fire, determined that they