A heroic dad-of-four ran into a burning building to help save a Scots gran after her house went up in flames. Dean Clark was on his way to work on Monday, April 24, when he saw smoke pouring into the sky from a nearby property.
The 35-year-old went into "autopilot" and immediately rushed over to the home on Niddrie Farm Grove, Edinburgh, where he found 85-year-old Margaret Burstow and her daughter Helen Knight, 59, trapped inside.
He jumped over the garden fence and saw Helen standing at the back door, reports Edinburgh Live. After making sure she was safe, Dean rushed back into the property for Margaret, who struggles with mobility issues due to poor health.
Dean, who is the manager of a local Co-op store, said: “I don’t know what happened. I went into autopilot and I guess adrenaline just took over. It was all about trying to get them out as quickly as I could because the fire was bad, the whole doorway was up in flames.
“As I was leaving the living room I could see the whole home filled with black smoke and parts of the flaming doorway were falling onto the carpet - it was absolutely boiling."
Thankfully, Dean was able to find Margaret and help her escape the blaze, before placing her in the care of a neighbour. The gran had recently suffered a cardiac arrest and her two daughters, Helen and Mary Thomson, had been regularly staying at her home to help care for her. At the time of the fire, Helen was sleeping on a blow up mattress.
Mary's daughter Margaret Auld, who is named after her granny, says the family are so grateful for Dean’s courageous actions and dreads to think what would have happened if he hadn't spotted the fire.
The 38-year-old said: “God knows what would have happened if he had not been here. When Dean got here the roof was on fire and the whole house must have been covered in flames but all he cared about was my auntie and my gran, not himself.”
“He gave a statement to the police and the fire service before just heading off to work - we didn’t get his name but knew that we wanted to track him down to say thanks to our hero."
Through the help of the local community, Margaret was able to find Dean at work - where they found he had prepared a care package for the her gran. The family were stunned at Dean's ongoing thoughtfulness, with his colleagues revealing he soldiered on through his shift despite visibly coughing due to his exploits in the burning building.
She said: “I’ve never met Dean before but when we went to where he works to drop off a thank you card we had found that the whole team at the Co-op had produced a care package for my gran knowing she had lost everything.
"He is an absolute hero and I don’t know what the situation would have been like without him. He definitely restored my faith in humanity.”
Unfortunately the home was so badly damaged by the fire that Margaret has had to move in with her daughter Helen, as she is the only family member with a downstairs bathroom. The family believe a chair lift left outside of the home for uplift had been set alight and that this had spread to the home.
Margaret said: “It is absolutely devastating. My gran has lived at that home for almost twenty years and put so much work into her garden with my grandad before he died."
However, she also shared an incredible story of her gran saving the lives of two boys from a neighbours flat around 45 years ago. She says that her granny had rushed into the tenement flat that had a hole in the ceiling and a caved in floor to rescue the pair - with her heroism even making the local news at the time.
“I told my granny that the universe had performed a 360 and that Dean was repaying her for her good deeds all those years ago,” she added.
A spokesperson for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service said: “We received a call at 5.21am this morning to reports of a fire at Niddrie Farm Grove. Three fire appliances were mobilised to the house which was alight. Crews attended and put out the fire before they left the scene after making the area safe.”
Police Scotland have been contacted for comment.
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