By Aaron Falk
The Deseret Morning News

PROVO, Utah — Tim Beardall's ears are still ringing from "the big boom."

His hands are wrapped with gauze, his face red after being critically burned Feb. 17 in an explosion at Pacific States Cast Iron Pipe Co., 2550 S. Industrial Parkway, just south of Provo.

While investigators are trying to determine what caused the explosion, Beardall is trying to figure out how he survived.

"When it was shredding that big building into pieces, how did it not kill none of us?" he asked aloud Monday at University Hospital. "It's amazing anything that has a heartbeat can live through that.

Somebody is watching over us."

Paramedics treated several workers at the scene and 11 others were taken to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo. Beardall and co-worker Gustavo Cervantes suffered the most serious injuries and were later flown to University Hospital. Beardall is the only employee who remains hospitalized.

"I'm doing good," the 35-year-old Beardall said Monday at University Hospital. "My hearing is still ringing, but I'm healing fast."

With his wife, LaDonna, at his side, Beardall recounted the details of the explosion.

A supervisor at the plant where he has worked for more than seven years, Beardall was filling in for another worker on the night of the explosion, he said.

"I just remember seeing a gas cloud go by a small flame," said Beardall, who declined to discuss further specifics of the explosion Monday. "Once that vapor got in the air, there was nothing stopping it."

The official cause of the explosion remains under investigation, but authorities believe the explosion occurred when a crane operator — possibly Beardall — began moving a load of calcium carbide. Some of the chemical slipped out of the hopper and fell into a vat of water, creating a highly flammable gas.

Once the gas filled the room, it exploded after being ignited by flames used in the production process, officials said.

Beardall recalled "a big ball of fire and then darkness — that was it," he said. "I couldn't see, couldn't breathe, couldn't do nothing."

Co-workers pulled Beardall out of the crane he was operating. He credits them with saving his life.

"Without them guys anything could happen," he said. "Everybody done what they were trained for."

Before Beardall was taken to University Hospital with second-degree burns on his hands and face, he remembers asking a co-worker to call LaDonna and tell a lie about his condition.

"Tell her that I got a little scratch and to meet me up there," he said. "I know how she is."

She is, Beardall said, the woman who has helped him through a painful recovery, the woman who sat by his bedside for three days as he writhed, lying in a medically induced coma.

"It rips you wide open and makes you look at things you never looked at before," LaDonna Beardall said.

Frightened by the tubes and the ventilator, Beardall's sons, ages 14 and 9, and a 7-year-old daughter, could not bring themselves to look at their father at first.

When her husband finally opened his eyes again, "It was a big weight off my chest," LaDonna Beardall said. "Thank God. I'm so happy to have him."

Now her children bounce on their father when they visit, she said. Tim Beardall said he has had visits from dozens of co-workers. He said he has spoken with union leaders and corporate executives at Pacific States' parent company, McWane Inc.

He said the company has paid for his hospital bills, and taken care of food, gas and lodging for his wife and children as they stay in Salt Lake City.

The company has had legal troubles in the past. Last year, McWane Inc. was fined $3 million for rigging air-quality tests to help the company evade state environmental-quality regulations.

But under new management, Beardall said it's a "night and day difference" at the plant.

Utah County commissioners named Pacific States one of two businesses of the year earlier this month. The company has a renewed emphasis on safety, Beardall said.

"If you can't do it safe, you don't do it," said Beardall, who called the explosion a "freak accident."

He said he has no plans for a lawsuit and hopes to return to work as soon as he is physically able.

"I don't want to work nowhere else," he said, despite his wife's pleas to consider a desk job.

"When you're a steel worker, it's in your blood," LaDonna Beardall said. "There's no gettin' it out."