“Blow yourself up, then; I don’t give a damn!”

I had walked only a few steps when it seemed as though I sensed rather than heard the explosion. The earth-shaking blast, which was heard throughout the small farming community and rattled windows in houses several city blocks away, sounded more like a muffled “whooompff” to me, barely enough to catch my attention.

It was a day much like any other early spring day in the small midwestern town of Clarinda, Iowa. I worked as a mechanic at a farm implement dealership. I had spent my childhood years working around equipment. I always knew the dangers present, but I had never come face-to-face with how quickly lives can be changed—forever. How could I know, when I awakened that March morning that the events of the day would leave me asking the question, “What more could I have done?”

The difference between that day and any other day at work revolved around the fact that we were preparing for our annual “open house,” a customer appreciation day. It was a day dedicated to customers of the business, which actually created extra work for us, or at least, a disruption of normal routine in a farm equipment maintenance shop. Maybe it was that very disruption which helped perpetuate the errors in judgment that precipitated the chain of events that were to occur that day. Or perhaps it was only the unwillingness of a man eleven- years my senior to accept a warning from a young, inexperienced nineteen-year-old mechanic. Whatever the reason, the events of this day would change the lives of those involved forever.

As part of the preparation for the open house, Bill, a thirty-year old friend, was taking empty oil drums and removing the top from the barrels, so they could be used as trash containers. As I worked in another service bay, I noticed him using an oxy-acetylene torch to cut the top from used oil barrels. He had already torched the top from two barrels when something caught my attention. What was it about the third barrel that caught my eye? Was there something different about that barrel or was it simply a premonition?

Still not understanding what had drawn my attention to the barrel, I walked over to the service bay where Bill and another co-worker were about to touch the bluish-white tip of the torch flame to the top of the barrel. I mentioned to Bill that he should vent the barrel by removing the plugs on the top of the barrel, or better yet use a cold chisel instead of the torch.

“I’ve cut the top from hundreds of barrels,” he replied sarcastically. “Maybe you should mind your own damn business.”

I felt the hackles on the back of my neck rise and my face flush with anger as he dismissed my warning.

“Blow yourself up then; I don’t give a damn!” I said.

Despite my anger at Bill for his sarcastic reply to my warning, nothing could have prepared me for what was about to happen.

The intense, white-hot flame of the torch had caused the flammable, highly explosive contents of the barrel to expand rapidly and violently, creating the unearthly likeness of an exploding bomb. The combination of searing heat and flame ignited the flammable cocktail mixture of fuels and oil in the barrel, blowing the bottom out of the barrel with the ground-shaking power of a V-2 rocket. The thrust created by burning fuels propelled the barrel almost through the ceiling of the shop, dousing him with what was left of its volatile and flammable contents. Destroying the track guides of the heavy shop doors on its way skyward, the barrel was finally stopped only by the heavy metal roof trusses.

Bill stood, childlike, mesmerized by the small, innocent, yellow flames dancing on his blue and black plaid flannel shirt. On his face, he had a dazed expression of bewilderment and disbelief. I yelled for him to tear away his shirt as I willed my legs to move. It was as though my feet were made of lead, and an instant before I could reach him, those tiny orange and yellow flames ignited into a huge mushrooming fireball.

I watched helplessly as Bill disappeared inside the ball of flame. He panicked, and like a terror-stricken animal, he ran screaming blindly through the flames. I watched co-workers attempt to tackle him and force him to the floor, but in his unbridled fear he was like an enraged bull. With a strength born in the terror of the moment nothing and no one could stop him.

Through the thick black smoke, gasping for air, I watched in horror as the human inferno ran terrified over the top of other employees trying to help him. I tried to make out the human form that was somewhere inside that ball of flame. Terrified at the sight and barely able to comprehend what was happening, with a strength that seemed to come from nowhere, I tore a fire extinguisher from the brackets that anchored it to the wall. As the ball of flame moved across the shop, I could almost sense him breathing the super-heated gases formed by the burning fuel and oil and wondered how anyone could survive such a holocaust.

Nauseous from the acrid fumes that permeated the building, I caught up with him at the opposite end of the shop. The sight of the fire extinguisher brought him to his senses. He stopped for me to douse him with the fire extinguisher. For a moment I hesitated, not knowing if the chemicals in the fire-extinguisher powder would worsen the burns or add to the terrible agony he was already experiencing. He screamed for me to put out the torturous flames that engulfed him.

The terrifying scene became surreal as if we were only a couple of school-kids, playing on a hot summer day, cooling each other with a garden hose. With Bill turning around and around, I emptied the pressurized, white powder of the fire extinguisher onto the flames that were burning him alive.

The gut-wrenching severity of his burns became horrifyingly apparent. All his clothes were incinerated, leaving the charred, oozing, flesh exposed. Like a surreal scene from a horror movie, his goggles were melted to his face, giving the appearance of a creature from another world. His leather gloves and belt had shrunk like tourniquets around his hands and waist. He asked for me to remove his belt, saying it was too tight, he couldn’t breathe, but as I tried to remove it, burned flesh would peel away with the belt. Bill was in an obvious state of shock as I tried to explain to him why I couldn’t remove his belt. The minutes agonizingly seemed like hours as we waited for the ambulance to arrive.

While waiting outside the shop, away from the suffocating smoke, for the ambulance to arrive and tending to his wounds as best I could, I became aware that of twenty-four employees, I was alone with Bill. I wondered, “Where the hell did everyone go?” I had been left alone, with him asking me over and over, “Am I going to die?”

As the dense black smoke billowed from the building, I wondered, how could I answer his question of whether he was going to die? His burns were extremely serious. I didn’t need a doctor to tell me that. I simply told him to relax, that he would be fine, all the time wondering if I was lying. My anger surged as he mumbled apologies for not listening to my warning; I fought the urge to scream at him for torching that damned barrel. I wanted to shout, “You stupid son of a bitch, what the hell were you thinking!” Initially angered by his apologies, I soon felt guilty; after all, he was the one who was burned. The horrible events of that day invaded my dreams and affected my every breathing moment, reliving the trauma night after night, trying to find some peace in my mind. My nights were haunted by the image of the fireball and of Bill as he ran through the shop screaming in his pain and terror. When the bedroom light went out the flames would ignite again.

Going back to work the next day proved to be one of the more difficult things I’ve ever had to do. I was greeted by the stench of burnt flesh and melted wiring, which stayed in the shop well past the time when repairs were made to the ceiling and insulation. A daily reminder that none of this was a dream, the smell and feel of scorched flesh would stay with me for a lifetime.

Bill died after a nine-month struggle, after an uncountable number of skin grafts, painful peeling of dead and burned skin, for which anesthetics were of very limited value. I will never forget the sense of helplessness and frustration I felt the day when I was told that he had died earlier that morning. He had been undergoing yet one more set of skin grafts. They said his heart just gave out.

When I heard the news, it was as though a demon had been unleashed inside me; anger filled every cell in my body. Anger at what? Anger at whom? I began to feel all the emotions, which I’d tried so hard to bury, boil to the surface.

I wanted to break windows and rip things from the walls. I wanted to hurt people: I wanted to scream. But mostly I wanted to cry. I had all that anger and nowhere to go with it. What could I do? Who was to blame? I stuffed the anger down deep within myself and tried to forget the images of the unbelievable horror I had witnessed.

On the day of Bill’s funeral, I stood staring at his lifeless body lying in the coffin. Torn between anger and sorrow, I thought, “What a waste; it didn’t have to happen.”

It was the sort of buried anger that made me feel an insane urge to grab him by the collar of his bluish-gray burial suit and shake him into sensibility. “Bill!” I wanted to scream. “You stupid son-of-a-bitch, why didn’t you listen to me?” Silence was the only reply— he wasn’t listening that day, either.

I was angry with him that he chose not to listen to me; I was heart-broken that he had lived and suffered for so long only to die so many long, agonizing months later. I was also angry for all that he had put me through, all the terrified nights I couldn’t sleep without the light on, because when the light went off, I would see him all over again, in a ball of flame, running across my bedroom floor, screaming in pain, yelling for someone to help him. I was angry with myself for not being able to do more, for not being able to stop it, for feeling so weak and powerless. I became even angrier with God. Where was God, and why didn’t he help or did he even care?

In the years that have passed since the accident, I’ve had to come to terms with that anger. Many years later when the nightmares returned, to haunt me once again, I was forced to face those demons. I began the long, painful path to healing where I’ve slowly realized that I had done my part. I finally began to accept that Bill had made his own choices that day.

There was nothing more I could have done.

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