A Ring Camera Captured A Man’s Valiant Effort To Save A Mother And Her Daughters From A House Fire
It was the middle of the night and Gladys Castañeda and her daughters were sound asleep as their next-door neighbor’s home went up in flames. Across the road, a neighbor noticed the flames and that the Castañeda’s weren’t outside, watching with the rest of the block. Ty Byers decided to take action and rush across the street towards the flames to alert the Castañeda’s to the impending danger. Ring doorbell video footage shows another neighbor, Amanda Smith, running over, desperately asking if they’ve gotten out yet. Both start yelling and banging on the windows and the door. All the while, Gladys thought someone was trying to break into their home. Using the Ring doorbell, she asked, “Can I help you?”
Once Byers realized she had the two-way speaker technology, he looks straight into the camera to shout, “The house next door to you is on fire! Your house is almost on fire!” Byers waited and helped run each of Glady’s daughters to safety while Gladys got prepared to abandon her home.
The Ring doorbell footage has since gone viral, and Gladys wants to shout Byer’s heroic efforts from all the virtual rooftops.
The fire that nearly engulfed her Mesa, Arizona home was sparked in the early hours of July 26, 2019. Byers was new to the neighborhood, and she didn’t know him that well, but he still showed up as a model neighbor citizen. Even though the incident happened last summer, the video has been recirculating. Gladys admits that not even her closest friends knew about the near-death experience because she didn’t want to share the video out of “respect to my neighbors.” Now, she’s had a change of heart. “I didn’t want to put them out there like that but the more I think about it, why shouldn’t I? What they did was amazing,” Castañeda shared to Facebook. Now, she’s asking if people can help her share the video as an example of heroism.
Video footage shows ash blowing in the wind as Byers shouts, “Your house is almost on fire!”
Castañeda was too afraid to go to the door, thinking robbers were causing a distraction to break into her home. With two young daughters, she didn’t know what to do but use the two-way speaker system on her smart doorbell to get more information. “Can I help you?” she asked over the intercom. After Byers shouts into the intercom, “The house next to you is on fire! Your house is almost on fire!” Castañeda responds, “Oh, oh, okay. Thank you.” Casteñeda ran out of bed to check on her oldest daughter, Emily and found that her room was already filled with smoke.
“Without Ring, I don’t think I would ever have opened the door because in my mind I thought they were breaking in,” she told Ring. “When it’s a fire that big, minutes can turn into devastation. Who knows what could have happened?”
Byers then individually rushed each of Castañeda’s daughters over to his garage.
Castañeda brought Emily to the front door and found Byers racing back to offer help just as she asked, “Can you help me?” Footage shows Byers sprinting across the street to rush Emily to his home across the street. A few seconds of inactivity go by when we see Byers sprinting back to the Castañeda residence. Castañeda passes over her one-year-old daughter, Victoria, and Byers rushes her over to her sister. Still, Byers races back and opens the door to lean in and ask, “Do you need any more help?” Fully clothed and with her phone in hand, she says, “No, thank you,” and runs across the street to be reunited with her daughters in Byers’ garage.
The Mexican-American mother is grateful for her children’s safety and wants everyone to credit Ty Byers and Ring doorbell for that.
Castañeda’s husband had left for work just 25 minutes prior, which illustrates how quickly the fire erupted into a blaze that would completely destroy her neighbor’s home. Meanwhile, her neighbor had no idea his home was even on fire. The Castañeda residence was thankfully untouched by the fire, suffering only minor damages to the garage and some trees.
The Ring footage is now being used by her local fire department to investigate how the fire started.
