A fire tears through a home at 30 Broad Lane in AuSable Forks Thursday afternoon. (Enterprise photo — Kelly Carroll)

AuSABLE FORKS — A fire tore through a multiple-occupancy home at 30 Broad Lane starting at 2:39 p.m. Thursday.

The AuSable Forks volunteer fire department responded to the call and found one occupant of the home, a young woman, on the scene, Fire Chief Howard Drake said. No one was injured in the home, which is owned by William Wardell according to Essex County property records.

“The center upstairs window, the fire was coming out of there and the upstairs was fully engulfed,” Safety Officer Michael Hart Sr. said. “There were animals that were entrapped, we smashed the window and got one dog out that was downstairs, but the other animals in the upstairs area didn’t make it.

“The young lady that lives here was trying to re-enter the building to get to her animals and she was pretty distraught,” he said.

The cause remained unknown Thursday night as Essex County Fire investigators were waiting for the fire to be suppressed to investigate.

“It did start upstairs, we do know that, there was no fire downstairs,” Hart Sr. said. “It started in that center window up there. I could see it across town when I was coming, I could see the smoke when I was coming up Main St.”

Sixty to sixty-five firefighters battled the flames with fire departments from Keenesville, Jay, and Upper Jay assisting. Clinton County Car 5 and AuSable Forks EMS were also at the scene.

“We hit it on the outside and the guys went inside, went up into the bedrooms, started chasing it and it got into the attic,” he said. “That’s what we’re fighting with now, we had no access to the attic and the fire got in. There was no way to get to it so we had to bring an aerial in.”

The American Red Cross had been informed of the fire.