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.

Our effort to gather information was like swimming up stream. We didn’t let that deter us. I tried calling the property owner of the well to get direct permission to walk across his land, despite officials’ concerns, but he was unavailable so we then tried the nearest neighbor.

We traveled to his home, about 400 yards away from the fire. He told us the explosion shook his house at just before dawn and woke up his family. He allowed me to walk to the top of a hill overlooking the distant site on the rear of his property. I debated climbing a rickety silo for a better view, but settled for the steep hill. Using a 300 mm lens from a distance of about 400 yards between the trees, I was able to capture the only image the paper’s published since of an actual out-of-control gas fire. It burned and blackened nearby drilling equipment, which was abandoned in mid-operation after an explosion caused minor burns to the face and neck of two workers.

Photograph still carries a sense of satisfaction whenever I see it, including Friday’s reprint in The Evening Sun.

It wasn’t the first time a lack of access to a scene had caused some photographic antics. I once arrived at a home where police had just executed a drug bust. As I pulled up, most of the officers went inside the house or moved to the backyard and I was told to stay along the front sidewalk. Again using a high powered lens and the consent of a nearby property owner, I was able to get to the rear of the building and snap several pictures of police rummaging through the home in full body armor.