A 72-year-old widow trying to fight off the bitter cold in her Lower East Side home by keeping the oven on died when her clothes caught fire yesterday morning, officials said.

Neighbor Frances Ayers, 49, tried bravely to save Claudette Rivera as screams and smoke filled the hallways of 124 Ludlow St. at 11:18 a.m.

“She was covered in flames. I tried to put [it] out,” said Ayers, who required treatment for smoke inhalation at New York Hospital.

The fire was extinguished at 11:43 a.m.

“There was black smoke everywhere,” said neighbor Vanessa Kark, a makeup artist.

Later, a former worker at the building’s ground-level store remembered Rivera as the type of neighbor who “always thought about everyone else.”