Christmas Miracle: She Found Her Fiancé Clinging to Life After A Major Anhydrous Leak, Here's How She Helped Save Him

It was calm across the rolling fields of central Iowa on Nov. 19. It was a Sunday, and Kendra Vander Leest says it was prime for fall fieldwork. 

“Before lunch, Joe decided it was fit to pull ammonia,” Kendra says.  

Her fiancé, Joe Rempe, spent all afternoon in the field that day applying anhydrous ammonia. 

“When evening rolled around, I checked on his Life360 and everything seemed fine at that point. 

About 7:30 p.m., she heard the tractor crawling toward the house. She thought it meant Joe was calling it quits for the night. 

“I was in the kitchen making our daughter Josie’s bedtime bottle and prepping her bottles for daycare on Monday. I went to put her bottles in our daycare bag and happened to look up, out the window, and I saw the tractor and a plume of anhydrous smoke. At that point, it was like time started moving really slowly,” Kendra says. 

A Giant Plume of Smoke 

Seeing that plume of smoke, and knowing what it was, her heart dropped. 

“I knew it was Joe,” she recalls. “I knew instantly it was Joe. I knew what I was seeing, but it was just surreal.”

Full of fear, she rushed to grab her phone. 

“As I’m running up the steps, I’m thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, he's gone. There's no way.’ As bad as that is, I thought there's no way [he’s alive]." 

She decided to call him, knowing Joe might not be alive to answer. 

“I knew I couldn't run out there into the plume. Otherwise, I would wind up dead or hurt. So, I called him and he answered,” she says. 

“I think she said, ‘Joe!’ All I could say was ‘help me,’” he remembers. 

"I hung up and called 911, but I knew by the way he said 'help me' he was badly hurt," Kendra recalls.

The 911 Call

Farm Journal was able to track down the 911 call Kendra made that day. 

“Pella 911, where's your emergency?” says the dispatcher. 

“We have an anhydrous ammonia accident,” Kendra says. “I need an ambulance. I need a HazMat crew. This is bad, bad.”

The 911 call even captured the moment Kendra ran outside her house and found Joe. 

“I'm on the phone with 911. You need water? Oh, God,” you can hear Kendra say. “Just lay down. I'm going to get water. Lay down. I'm going to get water.”

“All right, he inhaled?” you can hear the 911 dispatch operator ask. 

“Yes, his lungs are burned. He said his lungs are burning,” Kendra says. 

“The tank is completely unloading, but there's no houses nearby for anyone to get hurt. It's, it's bad,” she says. 

Kendra Found Joe Clinging to Life 

Kendra says when she rushed outside her house, she found Joe crawling on the gravel road, which was about 200 yards from the tractor. She says he was fighting for his life.

“I could hear him coughing. He was crawling toward the house, and as soon as he heard me, he just collapsed,” she says. 

Kendra says the second she saw the plume of smoke, she immediately knew it was anhydrous. That’s because her full-time job is with the Iowa Department of Agriculture in the Feed and Fertilizer Bureau. Part of her job is conducting anhydrous ammonia inspections at retailer facilities across the state. From her training and experience, she knew exactly how bad the damage could be. 

“He didn't have any burns on his skin, so the water I grabbed didn't really do any good. There was nothing for me to dump the water on. All his burns were internal in his nasal cavities, his throat, his lungs, those were all burned,” she says. 

“I was badly luck burned inside,” Joe says.  

Fire and rescue responded, and a Life Flight carried Joe to Des Moines. From there, he was transferred to Iowa City.

The Anhydrous Accident 

As Kendra was driving to the hospital, she still didn’t know what had just transpired in the field. All she knew is Joe was applying anhydrous, something he’s done for nearly 30 years. 

“I had just got hooked up to a new set of twins [anhydrous tanks],” Joe says.  

Typically, the anhydrous tanks have a hose holder, but he says that pair of tanks they had received did not. 

“So, I tried to put a loop on the hoses. Well, my hose must have come loose. And when I was turning on the corner, the left front tire of the twin tank must have run over my hose and then broke the front or pulled the threads out. And the hose came apart,” he says. 

He was toward the back of a nearby field when he heard a pop, and gas immediately started shooting straight toward tractor. 

“Gas was blowing right at me. It was hitting the back of the cab, the vapor, and going around the tractor,” Joe says. 

He tried to turn different directions to change where the smoke was shooting, but he says there was no wind that day. So, it didn’t do any good.  

“The whole field was turned into fog, and I knew I had to go to Plan B. I did not know what to do,” he says. 

That’s when Joe decided his only option was to head toward the house, all while he couldn’t see and was losing his ability to breathe.

“I knew where the bottom terrace would come out, so I knew I could follow the terrace,” he remembers.  

But as he got to a crossing that was in a low spot of the field, he says he couldn’t see anything. 

“I lost where I was. I just drove by feel,” he remembers. 

Somehow, Joe made it past the crossing, and at that point, the smoke cleared enough to see a gravel road. 

“I came east towards the house, and when I crested the hill I was blacking out, because I was losing air. And I really thought I was pretty close to dying,” he says. 

At that point, the tractor stopped moving. Inside the cab of the tractor, Joe's eyes were already so badly burned, he couldn’t see his phone to call 911 or Kendra.

“And I remember I was so darn scared to get out of the tractor. I only pulled 1.1 acres off that tank, so I knew that sucker had a lot of anhydrous in it, and it kept blowing at the tractor. I was so scared to get out, but I knew I had to because it was my only choice.”

At that point, Joe put on a sweatshirt he had with him, as a way to protect his skin. He also grabbed a bottle of water he knew he had on the floor. After he climbed out of the tractor cab, he tried to run toward the house, but he quickly ran out of air. 

“And I went down, so I started crawling,” he says. 

Diagnosis: Extensive Internal Burns

When Joe was airlifted to a Des Moines hospital, Kendra says she still didn’t know if he was going to survive. 

"Two doctors came in and told us what was going on. They told us they could not intubate him because his throat was swelling shut. And so they cut in a cricothyrotomy, which is an emergency trach, to get air to him," she says.

The doctors used saline bags with tubes to try and flush his eyes out. Once in Iowa City, Kendra learned even more. 

“When I got to Iowa City, they said that he had grade one to grade two burns in his sinus cavities, throat and deep into his lungs,” says Kendra. “It basically burnt his vocal cords, his voice box, and his mouth and tongue were completely swollen.” 

Kendra says the anhydrous burned the outer-most layer of his eyes, and even today, Joe can’t see enough to read, nor can he stand bright light. 

“The only thing the eye doctor said he can't fix is the dry eyes. So, he'll just take gel eyedrops forever, but considering everything that happened, we will take that,” she says. 

Kendra Nursed Joe Back to Health 

Joe spent 10 days in the hospital, but the real work for Kendra started when they sent Joe home. 

“I have taken about a month off work, and the nurses trained me how to take care of him, how to administer his meds, and crush medications,” she says. 

It’s something Kendra does every 45 minutes. A home health nurse comes twice a week, but the best nurse, Joe says, is Kendra. 

“She's…. good,” says Joe. 

"She Saved Me."

In this Christmas miracle, Joe knows Kendra is his angel. 

“She saved me, there is no doubt in my mind,” he says. 

In Joe’s eyes, November 19, 2023, is filled with many miracles, including Kendra seeing that something wasn’t right. 

“If she was over there, or another spot, she wouldn’t have seen me. She had to be right there, and she happened to be looking [outside]. I would say there was about 15 to 20 miracles from that tractor to the corner of the yard, to Des Moines and to Iowa City.”

 Joe fought for his life that day and now shares his story of survival. 

“I started yelling to myself, in my head, ‘You cannot die. You cannot leave Kendra by herself,’" he says. 

Joe’s story of survival is also thanks to Kendra, who’s cherishing the fact she can celebrate this Christmas with all their family.