BEVERLY, MASS. (WHDH) - Neighbors are being credited with saving an elderly man from a raging fire that ripped through his Beverly home on Thursday morning.
Emergency crews responding to a report of a fire on Gardner Street after 8 a.m. found flames shooting from a multi-level home and learned neighborhood residents had helped a man in his 90s escape the blaze.
“I’m just so grateful…After enduring the two years of the pandemic, living alone next door…That he made it, that he didn’t pass away,” neighbor Mary Archibald said. “It just would have been so heartbreaking.”
Video showed a large section of the home engulfed in flames before firefighters arrived at the scene.
Archibald says she saw the fire, immediately called 911, and then ran to the man’s front and back doors in an effort to get his attention.
“I don’t know how he made it through the front door. A miracle,” Archibald said. “It was so fully engulfed that I couldn’t even enter.”
The homeowner then suddenly emerged from the home, covered in soot, according to Archibald.
“I don’t know how he endured all that smoke that was in the house,” Archibald said.
The man was then brought to a warm car as crews worked to knock down the fire.
Beverly Fire Chief Peter O’Connor noted that the time of day likely saved the man’s life.
“No time of day is good to have a fire, but we’d rather have one when people are awake, around, and about than in the middle of the night,” O’Connor explained.
Archibald added that the man’s daughter was the one who called 911 six years ago when her house caught fire.
The man was transported from the scene by ambulance. There was no word on the extent of his injuries.
The cause of the blaze remains under investigation.
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