CHELSEA, Mass. - Firefighters in Chelsea battled a massive fire on John Street that started on Wednesday afternoon.
The fire, which took hours for firefighters to put out, has displaced at least 15 people.
At least two multi-family homes have been damaged by the fire, and families in several other buildings were evacuated.
Officials said the call for the fire first came in at around 3:40 p.m.
Cambridge, Malden, Everett and Melrose fire departments were called in to help put out the flames.
Residents were relocated to a church on 738 Broadway called Luz de Cristo.
Domingos Gomes and his family were in their third-floor unit when his wife Naicy Gabau noticed the building was on fire.
"I saw the smoke come through the front of the house, and then I'm like, 'What's going on?'" Gabau said. "And I could smell a fire. I told them, 'It's a fire!'"
The family raced outside, escaping with their lives but losing all their material possessions to the blaze.
"Everything, most everything in the house, I don't even have shoes," said Gomes.
The fire was upgraded to a 6-alarm fire shortly after 4 p.m. on Wednesday.
Two other adjacent buildings have been affected by the blaze, which was made worse by the elements.
"The wind was picked up when they first got here, and it was pushing down to the exposure side here," Chelsea Fire Chief Leonard Albanese said late Wednesday afternoon. "It's died down, but it's always a challenge with a fire like that."
Thick smoke covered the neighborhood, leaving a pungent smell in the air that had neighbors covering their faces even streets away from the scene.
A couple of firefighters were treated for minor injuries, but no one else was hurt, though some residents were looking for lost pets.
No fatalities were reported in this fire. The Red Cross is currently helping out the displaced families.
The cause of the fire is still unknown, and the investigation is still active.
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