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.

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Churchgoers huddle to pray after a service of the First Baptist Church in a field Sunday, four days after an explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas. The congregation could not meet in the church building because it is in the damage zone. The Associated Press

This was Sunday 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 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. 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, Firearms and Explosives, said experts plan to enter the crater in the next few days and start digging in search of an explanation.

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 will be held Thursday at Baylor University. At least one of the West volunteer firefighters who was killed, Joey Pustejovsky, was a member of St. Mary’s Church of the Assumption that held a solemn first Mass since the blast.

Firefighters and emergency workers in bright yellow jackets knelt in the pews as the Rev. Boniface Onjefu recalled driving toward the fire after the explosion rattled his house.

“I stopped at the nursing home,” Onjefu said. “I noticed a lot of people trapped. I assisted. I prayed with some and held the hands of some that needed comfort. I saw him in the eyes of everyone.”

“God heard our prayers and prevented another tank from exploding,” Onjefu said.

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