Thirty years later, George Shirley remembers running from a bag room explosion with a coworker named Tony; together they tried to drag their badly burned buddy Joe. When they grabbed Joe's hands and pulled, both of his arms snapped out and fell to the ground like burnt twigs. Somehow Joe lived for three more months. "I'll never forget him," says George, "we fished together."
As Bob Brown talks, he recalls more of the details from the night a dozen years ago. He dropped off pizza for the boys at the plastics plant where he was production superintendent. "I remember one guy teasing me because I was dressed up on my way to a meeting." Minutes after Bob left the young man was killed in a blast while trying to hose down a chemical leak. "After we found his body I had to drive over to his family and break the news."