Sometimes the hero you need happens to be the stranger working right beside you.

When a fire blazed through a building under construction in Reading, England, everyone stopped to watch.

However, suddenly reports came through that there was a construction worker stuck on the 8th floor roof, surrounded by flames.

The man had only a coat to protect him from the encroaching flames. And that is when 65-year-old crane operator Glen Edwards knew he had only moments to help save the worker.

After Edwards spotted the man, he quickly changed the crane from a digger he had been hoisting to a cage that he could send over to the roof, hopefully allowing the man to get in and be carried away from the flames.

Nothing in his experience, Edwards said, was ever as dramatic as this moment was.

“I have cradled a couple of guys off – [when they] damaged their leg and things like that so they could get in an ambulance – but nothing as dramatic as this,’ he said.

A construction worker was stranded on the roof of a building engulfed in flames. Photo by BPM Media

After attaching a cage to the crane, Edwards began moving the crane to the roof of the burning building.

As I slewed round I could see the guy out my left window – he was waving his coat, waving his coat (at the flames),” Edwards said.

“You can see there the wind was absolutely terrible. As I was coming down the cradle was swinging backwards and forwards and catching the wind,” he said.

Edwards said that the cage finally kicked off a fence and swung toward the man, and “he just managed to grab hold of it.” After the man climbed inside the cage and was secure, Edwards immediately hoisted it away and got the man down safely.

The entire rescue only took three minutes.

The heroic crane driver said he was ‘really shaking’ during the ordeal, adding, ‘I was alright when I got down and everything and I needed a quiet minute to get myself together.”

“When everyone come up to me and said ”well done, well done” – that’s when the penny dropped.”

Glen Edwards used his crane to save a man from the roof of a burning building. Photo by BPM Media

The rescued man has stayed anonymous, but Edwards hopes to meet him some day.

“Obviously he’s a bit traumatized so whenever he’s coming back on site [I’ll meet him]. He’s got to take me across the road for a drink,’ he said, smiling.

Despite the severity of the fire on the nearly $1 billion dollar tower project, only two people were taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation, including the man Edwards rescued.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Watch an interview with the unlikely hero, below.

Sources: Daily Mail | ITV