Crime & Safety

How Five Centreville Residents Saved Their Neighbors From a Fire

The Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department honored five people Thursday for rescuing two women from a blazing home in June.

Zoe Shankle, Al Hussein Ahmed Wanas, Ashley Osterday, Deborah Shankle and Said Benayed are the kind of people you want around in an emergency. Particularly when a fire breaks out. 

On Thursday, the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department presented the five Centreville residents with Life Saving Awards, after the group worked together last month, "without due regard for their personal safety," to . 

"It's not often we have citizens who are willing to do whatever it takes to help another person in distress," Deputy Chief James J. Walsh,  A-Shift Operations Deputy, said as he presented the awards. 

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Over the past month, the full story of what happened has slowly unfolded. The fire started shortly before 4 p.m. on June 22nd, after near a townhouse on Hoskins Hollow Circle in Centreville, according to Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department officials. 

When the fire started, Wanas, 24, was outside his home. Newly arrived from Egypt, Wanas had just been blowing leaves and chatting with Said Benayed, 48, a Fairfax County employee. They had discovered they both knew Arabic. All of a sudden, they saw smoke from a nearby house. 

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Wanas ran inside to get his fiance, Zoe, 22, and her mother, Deborah, out of their house. Benayed called 9-1-1 and ran to the direction of the smoke. He was joined by Ashley Osterday, another neighbor, who had been working from home that day due to a recent knee injury. They saw fire coming from the home's backyard. 

"We pounded on the door," Osterday recalled. "The fence was starting to catch on fire, so Said kicked the door in."

They were afraid people might be inside, but that first townhouse proved to be empty. They ran to the adjoining house. Once again, Benayed busted the door open. 

Inside were two women, asleep. One, an elderly lady, was laying on a hospital bed. They woke up the women, but the elderly lady couldn't leave on her own. By this time, though, Deborah, Wanas and Zoe had run inside. Wanas and Zoe helped Benayed lift the woman, while Deborah brought the wheelchair over. Then Deborah ran outside to see if she could do anything to help save the property. But it was too far gone.

"The fence just suddenly collapsed and a wall of flame came toward me," said Deborah, who works as a kindergarten instructional assistant at . So she went back out the front, while Osterday grabbed the women's Blue Beagle dog on her way out. 

As they were leaving, they were assisted by Captain William Moreland, a public information officer in the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department. He was off-duty that day and happened to see the fire as he drove by. He called it in, and immediately drove to the house and suited up. 

The two women were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Three of the five went to the hospital to be evaluated for smoke inhalation. . 

But there was no loss of life, thanks to the teamwork between the five neighbors. Much of it was instinctual. 

"We weren't thinking. We were just taking action because the house was burning down," Wanas said.

"It's amazing what adrenaline will let you do," said Osterday. "Sometimes you just don't think."

While no one at the ceremony on Thursday ever expected to get an award for saving a life, it's probably safe to say that it's only the second-most important event in Zoe and Wanas' week.

They're getting married on Saturday. 

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