Jon Arbuckle had just gotten off work at the hardware store where he’s worked for 26 years, when he got a call from his wife. She said there was a fire at the Iron Mountain pizzeria, the place where he’s made a living for more than three decades, a place he’s always considered home.

Wearing his red apron, he hurried to the restaurant, smoke and flames rolling out the window.

He and his co-workers waited at the back door, watching as a firefighter crawled into the rubble. When they spotted their boss, they shouted. But it was too late. He’d died.

“It was the worst night of my life,” Arbuckle told The Washington Post on Thursday.

The 58-year-old is one of many Iron Mountain pizza makers and waiters and cooks who have lost their jobs in the wake of a devastating fire earlier this month. The business was a family business, Arbuckle said, and he was the only one left to run it.

“I’ve been in this business for a long time, and there’s not another one like it,” Arbuckle said. “It just got to be too much, but when it got in the hands of someone else, it just got too much.”

That someone was a 31-year-old software developer and Iron Mountain native named Dan Willems.