In the spring of 2017, 21-year-old Antonio Navaret was on top of the world. A Florida native living in the quiet rural suburb of Wimauma, just south of Tampa, Antonio had recently found the love of his life, a young woman named Daisy Martinez. Now, the couple was expecting their first child, and they were thrilled at the thought of starting a family together.
For the time being, Antonio and Daisy were living with his parents, but Antonio had big dreams and a promising future ahead of him. Ever since graduating high school, he knew he wanted to be an auto mechanic. From the time he was a toddler, Antonio had been obsessed with cars. He would take apart and rebuild his toy cars, later sketching intricate car designs and finally tinkering with real vehicles as a teenager.
Eventually, he got his own car — a white Chevy lowrider pickup truck he affectionately named Casper. He decked it out with special rims, flashy lights, and a booming sound system. It was thanks to Casper that Antonio met Daisy at a local car meetup. She caught his eye across the lot, and when she smiled back, everything changed. Six months later, Daisy moved in with Antonio at his parents’ home, and soon after, they shared the exciting news with their families: they were going to be parents.
Not long after that, Antonio landed a new job with a subcontractor that performed maintenance at Tampa Electric Company’s Big Bend Power Plant in nearby Apollo Beach — about 10 miles from home. While it wasn’t his dream job, it paid well: $12 an hour, nearly double what he had been making. With that kind of income, he and Daisy could finally start saving for their own place before the baby arrived in the fall.
Antonio’s first days at the power plant were quiet. He attended safety training, learned the layout of the massive facility, and eased into his new responsibilities. The plant itself was a sprawling complex with four towering smokestacks. It produced electricity by burning coal in four massive units, each with a 12-story boiler where the coal was burned to create steam, which then powered turbines.
Three of the four units at the plant had been built in the 1970s and used an outdated system that turned the airborne ash from burning coal into molten slag — a lava-like substance. This red-hot slag would drop through a man-sized hole at the bottom of the boiler into a 30-foot cooling tank filled with water. Once cooled, the slag hardened into glassy rocks, which were then ground up and sold for industrial use. However, this process was prone to dangerous blockages.
On Thursday, June 29, just four days into his new job, Antonio woke up in high spirits. The next day, he and Daisy were scheduled to find out the sex of their baby during an ultrasound. He kissed her goodbye, hopped into Casper, and made his way to work — a picture of Daisy taped to his dashboard keeping him company.
That afternoon, two serious problems developed inside Unit 2 of the power plant. First, a buildup of slag inside the boiler had formed a plug over the man-sized drainage hole. Second, the already-cooled slag in the water tank had blocked the grinding mechanism. The proper and safe way to resolve these issues would have been to shut down the boiler, use dynamite to clear the top blockage, and send a team into the drained cooling tank to manually remove the lower one.
But shutting down a boiler is expensive. Instead, the plant’s management made a fateful decision: they would fix the issues while the boiler was still on.
At 4 p.m., a senior manager assembled a six-man crew, including Antonio, to carry out the repairs. Their plan was to drain the water from the cooling tank, open a side access hatch known as the “doghouse door,” and use water cannons to dislodge the slag from the grinding mechanism. Once that was done, they would figure out how to handle the blockage inside the boiler.
Antonio wasn’t part of the cannon crew. His job was to assist with cleanup during and after the operation. He stood about 10–15 feet back from the doghouse door, watching the others work.
The scale of the machinery surrounding Antonio was intimidating. Above the 30-foot cooling tank loomed the 12-story boiler, still actively burning coal. Temperatures inside exceeded 1,000°F, and molten slag tumbled inside like lava.
Roughly 20 minutes into the operation, disaster struck.
The weight of the slag buildup inside the boiler finally broke through the plug, and a torrent of molten slag exploded downward, smashing into the back wall of the now-empty cooling tank. It then rebounded and burst out through the doghouse door — a tidal wave of molten rock and fire.
Thousands of gallons of lava-like slag engulfed all six men. It splashed over them, covered the ground in a 40-foot radius, and created a six-inch-deep layer of molten death. Unlike water or mud, the slag didn’t just slow movement — it consumed everything. With each step, shoes, skin, and bone melted into the slag.
Antonio tried to run, but the searing heat overtook him. He collapsed onto the slag, burning alive. As he lay there, in excruciating pain, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and called his mother. She didn’t answer, so he left her a voicemail — the last words he would ever say:
“Mom, Mom, I’m burning. Please call the cops. Please, Mom.”
In the background, the hiss of steam and molten slag can be heard.
Five of the six men, including Antonio Navaret, died from their injuries.
Tampa Electric later paid settlements to the victims’ families. But no amount of money could ever replace what was lost that day — the life of a kind young man with big dreams, a loving partner, and a child he would never meet.