Amazon Driver Realizes Home Is on Fire While Delivering Package, Then Sees Car in the Driveway and Panics (Exclusive)

Amazon Driver Realizes Home Is on Fire While Delivering Package, Then Sees Car in the Driveway and Panics (Exclusive)

Ciara Aschan tells PEOPLE that she noticed something was wrong while she was still driving, then she spotted smoke and flames

David Chiu

Tue, December 2, 2025 at 10:30 AM UTC

4 min read

Ciara Aschan Ciara Aschan — Ciara Aschan
Ciara Aschan

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Ciara Aschan, 27, was on her delivery route on Nov. 10 in Des Moines, Iowa, when she noticed smoke and flames coming out of the back of a home
She called 911 and checked to make sure no one was inside of the home
Her quick thinking enabled firefighters to limit the home's damage to the upper floor

An Amazon delivery driver was at the right place and 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 in neighboring Des Moines when she noticed something unusual at a home in the 6900 block of Southwest 15th Street.

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

"Then I looked harder at it and I could definitely see the flames in the back of the house. That's when I said, ‘Oh crap, the house is on fire,' " she adds.

Aschan parked her vehicle, turned on her hazard lights, dialed 911 and immediately ran up the front door of the home. “I just focused my entire attention on that house,” she recalls, “because there was a car in the driveway. Normally, a car in the driveway means somebody's home. So that made me panic.”

She banged on the door and yelled to get the homeowner’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 "thankfully" wasn't locked, Aschan called out, making sure her voice echoed. Again, there was no response, but, she adds, "it looked somewhat vacant anyway.”

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

“I had knocked on the door because if they were home,” she says, “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, then that would be alarming, but they contained it pretty fast.”

She later learned from authorities that there was nobody in the home when the fire happened.

Des Moines Fire Department officials told CBS affiliate KCCI that Aschan’s call enabled firefighters to arrive at the scene quickly and limit the home’s damage 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 somebody would have been in there, obviously, we could have saved a life.”

In a statement to PEOPLE on Monday, Nov. 24, the DMFD confirmed the Nov. 10 incident in which 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.”

They went on to say that "there is no suspicion of malicious intent" and that the fire has been "deemed unintentional."

Aschan says that she later received a message of gratitude from a woman who said her mom owns the home with her husband.

“She essentially just said that 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 of the note.

Amazon also thanked Aschan in a statement shared with PEOPLE. "We appreciate the thoughtful actions by Ciara, an Amazon Flex delivery partner, who was delivering in the community when she helped avert a life-threatening house fire. We’re told her quick thinking and actions minimized the extent of damage,” the company said. "Thank you to Ciara, and all 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 glad that the house was able to be spared.

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

Read the original article on People

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