Amazon driver realizes house on fire while delivering package, then sees car in driveway and panics (EXCLUSIVE)

need to know

• Ciara Aschan, 27, was on her delivery route in Des Moines, Iowa, on Nov. 10 when she saw smoke and flames coming from the back of her home.

• She called 911 and checked to make sure no one was inside the house

• His quick thinking enabled firefighters to limit the damage to the house upstairs

An Amazon delivery driver was in the right place at the right time when she helped save a burning home from being completely destroyed.

Ciara Aschan, 27, of Johnston, Iowa, was in the process of delivering a package to neighboring Des Moines when she noticed something unusual at a home in the 6900 block of Southwest 15th Street.

“I was looking for an address [for my delivery]” she tells PEOPLE. “I was kind of squinting while I was driving, and then I saw smoke coming out of the house.”

“Then I looked at it harder and I definitely saw flames in the back of the house. I said, ‘Holy shit, the house is on fire,'” she added.

Aschan parked her vehicle, turned on her hazard lights, dialed 911 and immediately ran to the front door of the house. “I just focused all my attention on that house, because there was a car in the driveway. Normally, a car in the driveway is somebody’s house. So it freaked me out,” she recalls.

She screamed, banging on the door to get the landlord’s attention, but there was no response.

“Then I ran to the back of the house,” Aschan recalls, “and there was another door, and I just turned the handle,” Aschan recalls.

Opening the door, which was unlocked “thankfully,” Aschan called out, making sure her voice echoed. Again, there was no response, but, she adds, “it seemed somewhat empty anyway.”

While waiting for firefighters and other first responders to arrive — it only took six minutes — Aschan proceeded to deliver his package to a nearby home.

“I knocked on the door because if they were home,” she says, “I would let them know, ‘Hey, your neighbor’s house is on fire.’ You might want to go.’ If the fire had spread, it would have been terrible, but they got it under control very quickly.

He later learned from authorities that no one was home at the time of the fire.

Des Moines Fire Department officials told CBS affiliate KCCI that Aschan’s call enabled firefighters to get to the scene quickly and limit damage to the home to the second floor.

“It saved a lot of damage — it saved the house,” Des Moines Fire Department (DFMD) member Mike Morgan said, per the outlet. “If someone had been there, obviously, we could have saved lives.”

In a statement to PEOPLE on Monday, Nov. 24, DMFD confirmed the Nov. 10 incident in which smoke and flames were visible on the upper floor of the vacant single-family home.

“Many fire companies on the scene credit the quick thinking and use of the emergency dispatch system for the quick response and suppression of this fire,” the department said. “Special thanks to the Amazon driver who took a minute to investigate the scene to provide full information to the call takers who sent the appropriate response.”

They said there is “no suspicion of malicious intent” and the fire is believed to be “accidental”.

Aschan says she later received a message of gratitude from a woman who said her mother owned the house with her husband.

“She basically just said they were renovating the house for her and her three daughters, and it was her mom and stepdad’s house, and thankfully no one was there,” Aschan says of the note.

Amazon also thanked Aschan in a statement shared with PEOPLE. “We appreciate the thoughtful actions of Ciara, an Amazon Flex delivery partner, who was delivering in the community when she helped prevent a life-threatening house fire. We are told her quick thinking and actions minimized the extent of the damage,” the company said. “Thank you to Ciara, and all the drivers and delivery partners who go the extra mile every day for customers and their communities.”

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Aschan says she feels good about what she did – and is glad she was able to save the house.

“Not all superheroes wear capes,” she adds. “They wear Amazon vests.”

Read the original article on People