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A 26-year-old Iowa woman and her 2-year-old son died in a house fire in rural Wheatland after she reached 911 and pleaded for help from a smoke-filled upstairs bedroom she could not escape, according to the Quad-City Times and the Clinton County Sheriff's Office.

Taren Burris and her son, Logan Taets, were killed in the March 1, 2011, fire at 2329 Memorial Drive, a former farmhouse that had been divided into apartments, the newspaper reported. Both died of smoke inhalation.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety Fire Marshal Division and the sheriff's office released the 911 recordings days later in response to media requests. Burris's roughly 20-minute call was one of 47 recordings tied to the fire. On it, she can be heard gasping and telling the dispatcher that she and her son were upstairs in a bedroom and could not get out, and that the smoke was too heavy for her to find a window. "It's really, really smoky," she said, according to the Quad-City Times. The dispatcher urged her to stay low to the floor. About six minutes into the call, Burris stopped responding, and the dispatcher kept calling her name.

The first 911 call had come from Weston Hicks, a resident of the building, who told a dispatcher he had been asleep when "something went boom" and the house filled with smoke, the newspaper reported. He said he believed two people were still upstairs.

Six area fire departments responded, from Calamus, Clarence, Grand Mound, Lost Nation, Lowden and Wheatland, according to the Quad-City Times. Burris was found dead in an upstairs room. Her son was taken to a Davenport hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The Iowa State Fire Marshal's Office later ruled the fire accidental, citing "no evidence of criminally or intentionally set fire" in a release on its preliminary findings. Investigators said the blaze began in a basement apartment whose occupant was at work at the time. A resident of the main-floor apartment escaped, while Burris and her son were trapped in the upper unit.

Clinton County Sheriff Rick Lincoln said his 911 dispatchers are "certainly the first contact a victim has when they call for help" and are offered a critical-incident stress debriefing after traumatic calls. "It is very difficult to handle a situation or a call of that magnitude and still not let it affect you," he said.