Emergency services recovered the remains of a worker, Dylan Danielson, 32, and his two young daughters—aged 12 and 8—from the Horizon BioFuels Inc. facility in Fremont, Nebraska 24 hours after a massive explosion at the facility on July 29.
Danielson was one of 10 employees who work for Horizon BioFuels, which manufactures wood pellet fire-starters and animal bedding. According to state officials, the cause of the explosion was a dust fire. Dust fires produce vicious explosions. The company has a history of negligent safety practices relating to wood dust dating back to 2012. The girls were waiting inside the plant for their father to take them to a doctor’s appointment when the explosion occurred, according to monopoly media reports, which also say only these three were in the facility at the time of the explosion.
Residents of the town felt the explosion from more than half a mile away, according to monopoly media reports. Local resident Taylor Kirklin told monopoly media her whole house shook from the explosion, which caused such extensive damage to the facility that first responders and search-and-rescue teams took 24 hours to find the three victims. Dust fires produce particularly violent explosions and pose a serious threat to workers in mining, flour milling, and other industries when safety practices like adequate ventilation and cleaning for flammable dusts are not followed by the capitalists.
Horizon BioFuels was previously fined by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in 2012 for five “serious violations” that included a failure to adequately train employees on workplace hazards and machine maintenance. The OSHA reports also stated that the company failed to make sure wood dust did not pile around the milling machine. The company was ultimately fined $6,000 as a result of this investigation.
The Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy investigated the company earlier in 2025 after an air quality complaint in which they found wood dust well beyond the bounds of the property.
A fire had also occurred in May 2014 that placed the plant out of service for two months, according to past reporting by the Fremont Tribune.
The US Chemical Safety Board, a federal agency which makes industrial safety recommendations, said in an August 1 statement that will deploy a team to study the cause of the explosion.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 5,283 workers died from on-the-job injuries in the United States in 2023 and there were an estimated 2.6 million reported work injuries—likely an under-count due to reliance on voluntary testimony and under-reporting from the bosses.
The families of Hayven and Fayeah have set up GoFundMe accounts for donations to support the families here and here.
Image: A still from drone footage captured by eyewitness Justin Bignell of firefighters battling fires at the severely damaged Horizon BioFuels facility after the deadly July 29 explosion.
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