“We have lost our friends and neighbors. We lost the safety and comfort of our homes,” said [Pastor] Crowder, raising his voice over the whirr of helicopters surveying the nearby rubble from overhead. “But as scary as this is, we don’t have to be afraid.” The explosion at the West Fertilizer Co. rocketed shrapnel across several blocks….

WEST, Texas — The First Baptist Church in the tiny Texas town where a fertilizer plant exploded is still off-limits, so the Rev. John Crowder put folding chairs in a hay pasture and improvised a pulpit on a truck flatbed. At the elementary school, an official carted extra desks and chairs into the only public school campus that’s left.

This was Sunday [April 21, 2013] in West. Four days after the blast that killed 14 people and injured 200 others, residents prayed for comfort and got ready for the week ahead, some of them still waiting to find out when – or if – they will be able to go back home.

“We have lost our friends and neighbors. We lost the safety and comfort of our homes,” said Crowder, raising his voice over the whirr of helicopters surveying the nearby rubble from overhead. “But as scary as this is, we don’t have to be afraid.”

The explosion at the West Fertilizer Co. rocketed shrapnel across several blocks and left what assistant state fire marshal Kelly Kirstner described Sunday as “a large crater.” A section of the flat farming town near the crater, including Crowder’s church, is still behind barricades.

One school campus was obliterated, and on the eve of 1,500 students returning to class for the first time since Wednesday’s blast, Superintendent Marty Crawford said the high school and middle school could also be razed.

Nearly 70 federal and state investigators are still trying to determine what caused the fire that set off the explosion, Kirstner said. Authorities say there are no signs of criminal intent.

Robert Champion, the special agent in charge for the Dallas office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said experts plan to enter the crater in the next few days and start digging in search of an explanation.

“It’s a slow process, but we’re getting there,” Champion said.

Slow is the normal way of life in West. But the last several days for many of its 2,800 residents have melded into an anguishing and frustrating stretch of wait-and-hear – whether about the safety of family and friends, or the fate of their homes.

Six firefighters and four emergency medics were among the dead, and city officials announced that a memorial service would be held Thursday at Baylor University.

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