Just last week I found myself scrolling through the 17,000 or so pictures I’ve taken for the newspaper over the last few years. I was looking for one taken in 2009 when a coworker and I responded to a natural gas well fire and explosion that injured two workers.

I was writing a story about how Chenango’s firemen were going to be receiving special gas well emergency training and the incident two years ago was a good example of exactly the kind of incidents they might be responding to.

Calling the memory from the back of my mind wasn’t nearly a vivid as the images I recall on my computer. Looking through that day’s album brought back a number of nearly forgotten memories.

A former coworker, Jessica Lewis, and I were dispatched to the scene.

I can recall the hostility of the volunteer firemen; they did not expect to see press visiting the site, remotely located in the Town of Lebanon. I remember one exaggerating member telling us we all might die because the pipeline may explode and that it would safer if we left; besides, he informed us, no one would talk to us – though later the fire chief did and we survived to tell the tale.