Firefighters with the Saranac Lake Volunteer Fire Department tear apart a second-story porch wall, which had caught fire on the inside, at a house on Dorsey Street Thursday night. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

SARANAC LAKE — The inside of a short wall on a second-story porch at an apartment on Dorsey Street caught fire Thursday night. After residents put out the initial flames with a garden hose, the Saranac Lake Volunteer Fire Department extinguished the embers in the still-hot wall.

The SLVFD was dispatched to 38 Dorsey St. at 10:30 p.m. with two trucks and 11 members. SLVFD Chief Brendan Keough said residents had knocked down the flames with a hose.

Firefighters set to work dismantling the porch wall to get to its still-fiery innards. Keough said firefighters woke up a man who was sleeping in a back room as they began tearing the porch siding off and throwing charred wood and vinyl into a tow-behind dumpster on the street below.

There was almost no smoke and no flames at the time, but firefighters said the corner wall was still hot as the wood smouldered. Firefighters only had to use a couple gallons of water.

Keough said they determined the probable cause to be “discarded smoking material” in the wall.

Residents and neighbors gathered in the street to watch the firefighters work. One neighbor pulled a chair off their porch for an older lady from the apartment to sit on. Firefighters were back in service at 11:33 p.m.