On the night of Oct. 5, 2006, Bruce Radford and his wife were hanging out at home when the Apex fire chief called.

"You'd better get out here," said the normally unflappable chief.

"Here" meant EQ, a chemical-processing plant close to downtown.

Radford, Apex's town manager, slipped on his loafers, not bothering with socks.

"I'll be back in 30 minutes," he told his wife. Thirty-nine hours later, he straggled back through the door.

The hazardous waste storage facility at the EQ plant had exploded violently, igniting a huge fire and releasing a toxic chemical cloud. In those 39 hours, 4,000 people were evacuated, 40 emergency workers and residents were sent to the hospital with symptoms of chemical exposure, and the rest of us learned that a chemical waste facility could be operating nearby with few reporting requirements and few safeguards.

Yet even as the skies rained fire, Radford was in control, directing emergency personnel, responding to the onslaught of media from around the world.

Praising him for his calm command, Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly called Radford the best town manager in the country.

Later, I learned that the smooth-talking, wise-cracking Radford has had experience dealing with catastrophe -- closer to home than he'd like.

Radford suffers a rare congenital disease that has a complicated name but, in laymen's terms, is turning his kidney black from the inside out. He was diagnosed several years ago, after suffering what he feared at the time were mini-strokes.

The medicines he was given at first were nearly as punishing as the disease, causing him to pass out, or feel as if he were going to pass out, every time he stood up.

At the time of the EQ explosion, Radford had stabilized, but he wasn't getting better. He'd been placed on the kidney transplant list at Duke.

"I was told that of the people with this disease, one-third get better, one-third stay the same, and one-third get worse," he said.

He feared he was slipping into that third category.

Finally, a few months after the fire, Radford's doctor found him a highly experimental course of treatment -- a new variety of chemotherapy. Remarkably, the chemo has not only held the disease at bay; Radford has also recovered 30 percent of his kidney function.

So two weeks ago -- on the same day that EQ finally paid Apex $201,540 for its response to the fire -- Radford found out that what he expected to be his next-to-last chemo treatment was his last. For now, he is done.

"I'm not pretty, but I feel good," Radford quipped.

He said he still shakes his head when he considers that a year ago he and his town were both in what seemed to be such dire circumstances.

Yet no one was injured or killed. Environmental tests have come back normal in the city that sells itself as the Peak of Good Living. State laws regulating hazardous waste facilities have been tightened in the aftermath of the explosion. And though legal maneuvering continues over EQ's penalties, life has mostly gotten back to normal.

A year later, Apex is OK. Radford is too.