SYOSSET, N.Y. — A Long Island delivery driver is being hailed as a hero for running into a burning home to save a family.
The driver shared his harrowing account with CBS2’s Tim McNicholas on Sunday night.
The aftermath of the blaze reveals boarded up windows and tarps. Parts of the home are incinerated, but everyone who lives there is okay.
Syosset firefighters got to the home on Bluebird Drive just four minutes after the 911 call and found a family standing outside.
“I just saw the fire just getting bigger and bigger,” Kevin Rivera said.
Rivera had already helped get them out.
“Everybody is calling me a hero,” Rivera said.
The Amazon driver said he was finishing his route Saturday just after 4 p.m. when he saw the flames near the front of the home. He said he saw several people inside through an open front door, including a woman and a baby who were apparently unaware of the fire.
“I just rushed in, because I didn’t want nobody to die in that house,” Rivera said.
He said he told the six or seven people inside about the flames, but due to a language barrier, they didn’t understand at first.
“They was just confused,” Rivera said.
He urged them to leave through the back door, away from the flames. Eventually, they did and then they saw the house.
“They just started crying. They just got emotional,” Rivera said.
A woman named Amanda Johnson, who lives in the area, shot video of the fire.
“It would have been a lot worse,” Johnson said.
When she heard about Rivera’s actions, she posted his story on social media and praised the driver.
“I thought it was great,” Johnson said.
Now, the neighborhood that normally thanks him for his deliveries is thanking him for much more than that.
“To be honest, I just feel great that I did something,” Rivera said.
No one in the home was seriously hurt. Investigators are trying to figure out what caused the fire.
