Not one, not two, but three.
That’s the number of times Edward Clas, 51, ran into a neighbor’s burning Ozone Park home – and the number of lives he saved.
It all began when his daughter, Kendall, 15, who was outside the family’s 86th Street home brushing the dog, told him she smelled smoke on Wednesday afternoon, April 14.
Clas, a Correction Department mechanic for 15 years, ran outside and saw the house three doors down, reportedly belonging to Georgina Gonzalez, was in flames.
“I didn’t think, just grabbed my house phone,” said a humble Clas, who, for his heroism, got to meet Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday, April 20.
He arrived at the scene and asked if everyone in the house had gotten out. When he was told they hadn’t, he handed over his phone and ran inside.
“Ten feet inside the front door there was a three-year-old boy just standing there,” said Clas. “I picked him up, brought him outside, and gave him to a neighbor.”
Then he went back in, checking through the house.
Halfway up the stairs of the two-story home, he said, there was a four-year-old boy. Again Clas affected a rescue.
Then his instinct kicked in.
“I started to walk out, but something told me to go back in.”
He began shouting to see whether anyone was left inside, and heard a woman shout back in Spanish.
He found grandma in an upstairs bedroom, trying to open a locked closet.
“I told her in Spanish we had to leave,” he said, but she seemed unwilling, “so I grabbed her by the shoulders and ushered her out of the room.”
At that point, Clas told The Courier, the smoke had gotten pretty bad.
“I was scared, and grateful we didn’t fall down the stairs,” he said.
By that time, 130 firefighters were on scene and the three-alarm blaze was brought under control. No one was injured, and Clas estimates his acts of heroism only took him only a minute to a minute and a half.
“I just did what I had to do,” he said. “I said to the mayor, ‘I hope it never happens again.’”
Officials said that the fire, which caused serious damage to both 108-10 and 108-08 86th Street, was started by a juvenile playing with a lighter between the two buildings.
The unidentified child will be referred to the FDNY’s Juvenile Fire Setters Intervention Program, in which Fire Marshals work with children and their families to address an inappropriate interest in fire.
“I thought it was a shame the kids were playing with fire,” said a neighbor who brought her own sons, ages 16 and 9, to see the burned-out homes.
For his bravery, Clas can expect to receive an award from the Correction Department.
But, more touching, he said, was the delivery of an Edible Arrangements array on Sunday, April 18, sent by his grateful neighbors.
“Those poor people, they lost everything and they took the time and effort to do that for me,” said Clas.
