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Steamboat Springs — Lynnea Teters didn't know how to react to the phone call last week informing her that her dad was seriously injured in a propane explosion at his Yampa home.

"I didn't even think what that meant. I was in shock," Teters said Tuesday.

She immediately flew from Oregon to be with her father, Michael Teters, 54, who was flown to Greeley after the explosion seriously burned him and fellow Yampa resident Charles "Chuck" Broadbent, 57.

Lynnea Teters was the first member of her family to see her father in the hospital.

"The nurses tried to prepare me for what I was going to see, so I peeked in through the window first to get the shock over," she said. "His face looked like it was melting off. It didn't even look like my dad. They had him all covered with blankets, so all I could see was his toes. But I knew those were my dad's toes."

Lynnea Teters, 23, said her father suffered second- and third-degree burns to nearly 20 percent of his body, including his hands, arms, knees and face. Michael Teters has been in a medically induced coma since the accident and has not been able to communicate or open his eyes for eight days, she said. Michael Teters and Broadbent have been on IV drips and breathing ventilators since the accident.

The explosion occurred May 15 while the men were installing a propane water heater in Teters' home.

Routt County Sheriff John Warner said the men were trying to check the draft in the crawl space in which they were working when the explosion occurred. The home's old propane water heater and gas lines hadn't been replaced since 1952. The propane line had corroded, allowing propane to leak into the crawl space, Warner said.

"There was no smell to alert them that there might have been a leak," he said.

Warner thinks Broadbent lit a match to check the air draft, igniting the gas and causing the explosion.

Lynnea Teters said her father underwent the first of many skin graft surgeries Monday. Doctors will be taking skin from his thighs to graft to the burnt areas of his body, she said.

Because he will be undergoing surgery, Lynnea Teters said, doctors have kept her father sedated since the accident so he won't be "in and out and in and out."

"That's been the hardest part. I just want him to wake up. I literally speak to my father every single day, and now I haven't talked to him for eight days," she said.

Lynnea Teters said she thinks her father may open his eyes Thursday or Friday, and he most likely will have no memory of what happened.

"He'll know where he is. He'll know he's in the hospital, but I don't think he'll know what's going on," she said.

She said Broadbent's condition is similar to her father's. Broadbent's wife, Valerie, was not available for comment Tuesday.

Lynnea Teters said doctors think her father will be in the hospital for a month and will require extensive physical and occupational therapy to help him relearn to walk and use his hands.

A benefit account has been set up in Lynnea Teters' name for people to make contributions. Michael Teters doesn't have health insurance, she said.

"As of right now, all the healing is going as it should. There is still a chance for infection or pneumonia, though," she said.

For that reason, the family requests that people make contributions to the account instead of sending flowers; neither man is allowed to have flowers in his room.