Snatching the breath and stinging the face, it was the fiercest of Iowa’s weather; icy particles clung to garments and soaked through layers till the wet and cold went bone deep. But Jack Westphal stood with sweat trickling down his face. Heat from the monstrous furnace, which earlier in the day had been the office of the Lindsborg Chamber of Commerce, washed over him. He watched from a half block away, awestruck, as the building was consumed. Wild tongues of red and orange, wind-driven and gluttonous, licked up past the roof, lolling into the black, starless night. It could be seen for miles out into the countryside, a weird, lurid glow low on the horizon. Fire equipment and volunteers had come from four other towns, to fight desperately to keep the blaze from spreading. “That’s the most we can hope for,” Thurman McPaul, the Lindsborg fire chief, shouted over the wind and the roar of the fire as Jack recorded him with a video camera.
