In his final moments, 32-year-old Dylan Danielson made a desperate phone call, not for himself, but for the daughters he couldn’t reach.
Trapped inside the collapsed burning Horizon Biofuels plant in Nebraska after a sudden explosion, Dylan was pinned under debris, surrounded by fire, and knew time was running out. His voice, shaking with urgency, came through the phone to his wife.
“Get someone in there to get them out,” he begged. “Our lives are in there. We need to get them out.”
But help couldn’t come fast enough.
One ordinary day turned unthinkable
It was meant to be a special visit. Dylan had brought his daughter and stepdaughter, Fayeah, 8, and Hayven, 12, to work with him on July 29. With his boss’s permission, the girls waited in the break room of the wood pellet plant while he worked nearby.
That break room, meant to be sturdy and safe, was located at the base of the facility’s main tower — the very tower that unexpectedly exploded.
“I don’t know if it’s made for an implosion like this,” said Hayven’s stepfather, Robby Baker.
A heroic rescue effort, too late
The explosion sparked a massive fire that quickly overtook the building. Smoke thickened. Flames spread. Rescue teams struggled to get close.
Nebraska Task Force One, helicopters, drones, and 17 agencies were called in. But even with all hands on deck, the heat was too intense, the building too unstable.
Crews worked through the night. Still, they couldn’t get in.
What began as a rescue slowly turned into something far more heartbreaking: a recovery.
A community in mourning
Dylan’s body was recovered the following day. That evening, both Hayven and Fayeah were found.
Tributes and fundraisers have poured in from across Nebraska and beyond.
“Hayven will always be a beautiful, goofy, caring, and bright ray of sunshine who gained her angel wings too soon,” one GoFundMe read.
Another remembered Fayeah as “a bubbly girl that lit up every room she walked in.”
And Dylan? “He was such a good daddy, he really was,” wrote his aunt, Kathy Harle.
A father’s love in the final seconds
The phone call Dylan made that day wasn’t about saving himself. It was about his girls. Even as fire closed in, he thought only of getting them out.
And now, in the echoes of that final call, a family, and a community, is left remembering the power of a father’s love and the devastating fragility of life.
