An Amazon delivery driver happened to be in exactly the right place at the right moment when she helped prevent a burning home from being completely destroyed.
Ciara Aschan, 27, of Johnston, Iowa, was in the middle of her delivery route in neighboring Des Moines when something unusual caught her eye at a home in the 6900 block of Southwest 15th Street.
“I was looking for the address for my delivery,” she recalls. “I was kind of squinting while I was driving, and then I saw the smoke coming from the house. Then I looked harder and could definitely see flames in the back. That’s when I said, ‘Oh crap, the house is on fire.’ ”
Aschan parked her vehicle, flipped on the hazard lights, dialed 911 and ran straight to the front door. “I just focused my entire attention on that house,” she says. “There was a car in the driveway. Normally, a car in the driveway means somebody’s home. So that made me panic.”
She pounded on the front door and shouted to try to alert anyone inside, but no one answered.
“Then I ran to the back of the house,” she says. “There was another door, and I just turned the handle.”
The door, “thankfully,” wasn’t locked. Aschan opened it and called out, making sure her voice echoed through the home. Again, there was no response — and to her, the place “looked somewhat vacant anyway.”
While she waited for firefighters and first responders — who arrived in about six minutes — Aschan still finished a nearby delivery.
“I had knocked on the door because if they were home,” she explains, “I was going to let them know, ‘Hey, your neighbor’s house is on fire. You might want to leave.’ If the fire were to spread, that would be alarming, but they contained it pretty fast.”
She later learned from authorities that no one was inside the home when the fire broke out.
Des Moines Fire Department officials told CBS affiliate KCCI that Aschan’s call allowed firefighters to get there quickly and keep most of the damage confined to the second floor.
“It saved a lot of damage — it saved the house,” Des Moines Fire Department member Mike Morgan said, according to the outlet. “If somebody would have been in there, obviously, we could have saved a life.”
In a statement, the Des Moines Fire Department confirmed the Nov. 10 incident, noting that smoke and flames were visible at the rear upper floor of the unoccupied single-family home.
“Multiple fire companies at the scene credit the quick thinking and utilization of the emergency dispatch system in resulting in the rapid response and suppression of this fire,” the department said. “A special thank you to the Amazon driver for taking a minute to investigate the scene to provide thorough information to the call takers that sent the appropriate response.”
Officials added that “there is no suspicion of malicious intent” and that the fire has been “deemed unintentional.”
Aschan says she later received a heartfelt message from a woman whose mother owns the home with her husband.
“She essentially said they were renovating the house for her and her three daughters, and that it was her mom and stepdad’s home, and that thankfully nobody was there,” Aschan says.
Amazon also publicly thanked Aschan, saying in a statement that the company appreciates the thoughtful actions of Ciara, an Amazon Flex delivery partner, who was out delivering in the community when she helped avert a life-threatening house fire. The company noted that her quick thinking and response helped minimize the damage.
Aschan says she simply feels good about being able to help — and relieved that the house was spared.
“Not all superheroes wear capes,” she adds. “They wear Amazon vests.”
