A TRAGIC phone call made by a father before an explosion killed him and his two daughters has been revealed.
Dylan Danielson, aged 32, brought his two daughters, Hayven, 12, and Fayeah, 8, to his job at the Horizon Biofuels facility in Nebraska when an explosion occurred, trapping all three inside.
In Dylan’s final moments, he called his wife, begging her to try to get the two young girls out.
“Right after the building collapsed, he was pinned inside of it,” Robby Baker, Hayven’s stepfather, told KMTV News.
“He called his wife, informing her of the girls’ location and urged her to get someone to rescue them, while he was trapped and surrounded by flames.
“Our lives are in there. We need to get them out.”
It was Dylan’s turn to watch Fayeah, who is the half-sister of Hayven and the biological child of the 32-year-old.
During her visit, Dylan brought the two girls to work with him on July 29, a privilege his boss had granted him.
However, while the girls waited in the break room of the wood pellet and animal bedding manufacturer, a tower in the plant abruptly exploded.
“[The break room] is in the bottom of the main tower – and it’s supposed to be a sturdy room,” Robby told WOWT.
“I don’t know if it’s made for an implosion like this.”
The dense smoke and fierce fires caused the building structure to give way, preventing the crews from safely entering to provide assistance.
Officers called in Nebraska Task Force One and 17 other agencies to help with the rescue, ABC affiliate KETV reported.
The extreme heat also slowed down the crews’ response with the Salvation Army and Red Cross working to help keep the first responders hydrated.
Helicopters and drones surveyed the area from a distance, helping first responders find an entry point to rescue the three trapped individuals.
Hours later, responders still hadn’t been able to enter the building as the fire raged on.
Our lives are in there. We need to get them out.
Robby Baker
Despite their efforts through the night to control the blaze, it continued to burn the next morning, shifting the operation from a rescue to a recovery mission.
“My heart hurts. It hurts for this situation, it’s a tragedy,” Fremont mayor Joey Spellerberg said during a press conference.
One day after the explosion, Dylan’s body was recovered.
Later that night, his daughters bodies were also recovered.
Since their bodies were discovered, several GoFundMe pages have been started to support their families.
“Hayven will always be a beautiful, goofy, caring, and bright ray of sunshine who gained her angel wings too soon,” one fundraiser read.
Another described Fayeah as a bubbly girl that lit up every room she walked in.
“[Dylan] was such a good daddy, he really was,” Dylan’s aunt Kathy Harle wrote on a remembrance page.
