ANKENY, Iowa — An electric kitchen fire nearly destroyed everything in a young family's Ankeny home on Thursday morning, and now they are working to figure out their long-term solution.
Lyndi Danner heard a popping sound come from the kitchen, and her mother-like instincts instantly kicked in to find and get her 5-month-old who was sleeping.
After grabbing a bottle of formula for her newborn from the table and making it outside safely, Lyndi called 911 and her husband Tristin Danner, who was dropping one of their other kids at daycare.
Tristin said he couldn't believe what his wife was telling him over the phone, but ran down the hallway and drove home quickly.
"There was smoke rolling out the whole building," Tristan said. "It was very overwhelming and scary and we didn't really know how to react because we've really never had anything like this happen before."
The Danner family had to sign some paperwork allowing fire officials to investigate the cause of the fire, but upon a search, the Danners learned all their belongings were a loss, due to the smoke pollution and soot that had appeared on all items, walls and ceilings across the two-story townhome.
Kitchen appliances are burned, cabinets are tarnished, rubble coats the floors and upstairs bedrooms are smeared with soot. Lyndi has also operated her own baby clothes home business for three years, but now she'll have to restart the business because the clothes were ruined in the fire.
Since Thursday morning, the Danner family, with help from relatives and generous neighbors, have started tossing ruined belongings into the dumpster on their driveway.
Since Thursday's fire, the Danner family had been living in a hotel before finding a new place to rent for the time being.
This isn't the first time the Danner family has had to start over: In late December of 2022, the Danners found out their Marshalltown home had black mold, and they were forced to get rid of "absolutely everything".
"Be thankful for what you have, because you can wake up the next day and it can all be gone," Lyndi said.
Luckily, community members are lining up to help the Danners: A relative set up a GoFundMe page where dozens of friends, family members and even strangers have donated to the family.