NORTHFIELD — Fire officials are working to determine the cause of a fire that displaced residents of a three-story apartment building at 5 Pine St. on Friday night.

“There is no cause found yet,” Fire Chief Floyd “Skip” Dunnell III said Saturday morning. “I determined the area of origin was from the front room of the third floor.”

The State Fire Marshal’s Office is expected to help determine the cause of the fire on Tuesday, Dunnell said.

Although no residents or firefighters were injured, two cats died on the third floor, while one remains missing, Dunnell said. Two cats were rescued from the second floor, as well as a small turtle.

The 911 call came in at 8:54 p.m. on Friday. According to Dunnell, when firefighters arrived, they called a second alarm due to the blaze’s severity. Most of the fire was extinguished in an hour and a half, although a fire watch crew stayed until 6:30 a.m.

An initial report was called in by Greenfield residents Diana Nunez and her boyfriend, Derrick Adams, who were driving past the apartment on their way home from New Hampshire and saw the fire coming from a window.

After calling 911, they knocked on doors at surrounding buildings to ensure residents got out safely in case the fire spread.

“The wind was blowing and no one had any clue what was going on,” Nunez said.

Nunez and Adams left when first responders arrived.

An elderly couple who lives on the first floor was escorted out of the building by two people, including a passerby and part-time police officer Ben Welcome, according to Dunnell. The second-floor tenants, two people, were alerted to the fire by their smoke alarms.

“Smoke detectors made a hell of a difference,” he said.

The third-floor tenants, a couple with three children, were away in Maine when the fire started, Dunnell said.

The building is uninhabitable. According to Dunnell, the incident resulted in heavy fire damage on the top floor, minimal fire damage on the second floor, and extensive water damage on the first and second floors. An insurance adjustor is expected to better assess the extent of the building’s damage this week.

“It is going to be an expensive repair,” he said. “I would say the building is not a total loss at this point.”

The tenants will stay with friends and family as a short-term solution, according to Dunnell. The American Red Cross has been in touch with all three sets of tenants.

The second-alarm fire brought in mutual aid from Bernardston, Erving, Gill, Turners Falls, Greenfield and Warwick, as well as Hinsdale and Winchester in New Hampshire and Vernon in Vermont. The South Deerfield Fire District acted as the rapid intervention team and the Brattleboro, Vermont department covered Northfield’s station.

“The crew and mutual aid crews did a good job,” Dunnell said. “We did an aggressive attack on the fire and kept it down.”

Reach Bella Levavi at 413-930-4579 or blevavi@recorder.com. Reporter Julian Mendoza contributed to this article.

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