Tim Townsend had just left the Hope Fire Station and was walking his Weimaraner through downtown Philipsburg about 1 a.m. when he noticed something strange.

"It looked like smog, hanging over the town," Townsend said. "But it was too cold outside for that."

As he walked his dog up Fifth Street, he realized what he saw was smoke.

He quickly called his wife, who is also a firefighter, and told her to pick up the dog and get to the fire station. Townsend still had his emergency radio with him, and he used that to report the blaze at 421 E. Pine St., a house that had been converted into four apartments.

Seven people were left homeless by the early-morning blaze that Philipsburg Fire Chief Jeff Harris thinks began in the basement of the house. The toll could have been much worse, Harris said Saturday, if Townsend hadn't acted so quickly.

After alerting the fire department, Townsend started banging on apartment doors, trying to get the residents out. There were smoke detectors in the apartments, he said, but he did not hear any of them going off.

"There was no one outside," he said. "I was knocking on doors, waking people up, and they had no idea why I was there."

More than 60 firefighters from 11 different companies in Centre and Clearfield counties responded to the blaze, fighting flames for about seven hours. The cause of the fire is under investigation by the state fire marshal, Harris said, but it is not thought to be suspicious.

The bitter cold caused equipment and air packs to freeze, Harris said, forcing firefighters to battle the blaze in short, rotating shifts before retreating to trucks to warm up.

John Carr, who lives near the apartment building, said he heard firetrucks early Saturday morning. He sprinted down Pine Street and found smoke and bright red flames shooting out of the building, he said.

"What an awful thing," Carr said Saturday afternoon as he stood in front of the charred, gutted building.

Firefighters tried twice to fight the fire from inside the building but were called to evacuate because of safety concerns, Harris said.

"The stairwell lit up when they were in there the first time," he said. "And the second time, the roof began to collapse."

Eventually, the building was deemed safe enough to enter, and firefighters got the blaze under control. The building is a total loss, Harris said. All of the tenants are staying with friends and relatives.

Soggy couches, kitchen tables and chairs were strewn about the small yard of the house Saturday afternoon. Freezing temperatures cemented the few salvageable possessions to the ground.

Kim Selfridge, of Clearfield, said that she got an early-morning call from her daughter, who told her that the building was in flames.

Her daughter, Kristina Conklin, 21, had lived in the apartment with her husband, Cody, and his 2-year-old son, Cameron, she said.

Earlier in the night, her daughter had heard a few "pops and cracks" from upstairs but attributed it to a couple who had been fighting, Selfridge said. If it had not been for Townsend, her daughter would have went back to bed, she said.

"She would have slept her life away," Selfridge said.

The Conklins, who were recently married, lost everything.

Standing near the rubble, Bill Selfridge, Kristina Conklin's father, plucked a bright-yellow Tonka truck out of the rubble. Pink insulation was frozen to it.

"You think this is Cameron's?" he asked before carrying the toy truck over to his wife. "I guess this is all he's got now."