That’s why we bounced back.”

Joey Pustejovsky's family, including, from left to right, his sister-in-law, Dolores; his mother, Carolyn; his father, Joe; his widow, Kelly; and his brother, Brad. Photograph by Sarah Wilson. 

Three months after the fire, ATF agents spoke with a group of firefighters who were willing to meet and told them that they hadn’t done anything wrong. This was a relief to some. In the days afterward, several of the firefighters caught up with each other one-on-one, and they gathered at the fire station for business meetings, sometimes revisiting the events of the night of April 17. But talking about the blast was still difficult. The questions that remain for many of the volunteers may never be answered. 

Robby Payne remembers talking to someone when he arrived at the scene, and he hopes he can learn someday who it was. “For me, it’s a big question: Is the person I talked to still alive?” he asked. “I don’t know that. I feel certain he isn’t because I was in the very front. I feel certain he was killed. I just don’t know who it was. People say, ‘Maybe your memory will come back.’ That won’t happen.”

That void in his memory may be one of his greatest blessings. Unlike some others, he doesn’t shrink from the sound of sirens or jump when he hears fireworks. (When a group of vacation Bible school kids visited the firemen at the station recently to give them thank-you cards, the children climbed on the truck and hit the siren, a sound that sent a jolt through many of the firefighters.) Still, he doesn’t know if he’s ready to put his bunker gear on again. “That’s something that’s been weighing heavy on me,” he said one day this summer, sitting at his office desk at the funeral home. “Should I retire? Take a leave of absence? Get someone else who can get in there? It’s something I’m wrestling with.” 

There were many points of business to deal with at the fire station in the wake of the disaster. Three trucks lost in the explosion needed replacing. Insurance adjusters and investigating state and federal officials required meetings. And even as the smell of smoke still hung in the air and scraps from the fertilizer plant continued to litter yards and dangle from trees, the firefighters had to make certain they were prepared for the next emergency. When the West Volunteer Fire Department posted five new open positions, thirteen people applied. Nobody was surprised.