Nebraska biofuels plant explosion kills 3 people, including 2 young girls

Two young girls and an adult man are dead after a huge explosion tore through a Nebraska biofuels plant, officials said Wednesday. 

The three had been missing since the Horizon Biofuels facility exploded Tuesday in Fremont, about 32 miles northwest of Omaha. All three were in the plant at the time of the explosion, Dodge County Attorney Pam Hopkins told CBS News. On Wednesday, the focus at the scene “shifted from rescue efforts to recovery efforts,” Hopkins said.

The three have not been identified. Fremont Mayor Joey Spellerberg said at a news conference that the man was an employee at the plant. The two children were waiting for him to go to a doctor’s appointment. The girls were under 12, Spellerberg said. 

“My heart hurts,” Spellerberg said. “It’s a tragedy. We pray for every person involved.”

Photos taken after Tuesday’s blast show the plant’s tall tower torn off, exposing mangled metal and ripped siding. Debris littered the ground, and nearby residents say the blast shook their homes. Smoke and flames have smoldered in the wreckage for nearly a day. Spellerberg told radio station KFAB that the fire prevented crews from getting close to the building. 

“You have the feed mill area, you have the office area just under flames, basically it has not stopped,” he said.

Fremont Fire Chief Todd Bernt said first responders were up against “heavy smoke and a lot of flames” when they first arrived at the facility, which is surrounded by other manufacturing and food processing plants.

The plant makes animal bedding and wood pellets for heating and smoking food, using tons of wood waste, and Bernt said they believe the facility stores wood and some alcohol-based materials. A 2014 fire at the building had damaged the electrical system but left the structure intact, according to reporting by the Fremont Tribune.

Taylor Kirklin, who lives about a half mile from the building, said her whole house shook Tuesday. She said the explosion was so loud that she thought someone had crashed a car into her family’s dog kennel business on the property.

“I got up and looked outside and there was a huge plume of smoke,” she said. “We were really unsure when the explosion happened which plant it was, because there are so many in that area.”

Fremont is a city of about 27,000 people and the sixth-largest in Nebraska.