Fire trucks lined Rosedale Avenue Tuesday night after a fire was reported in one of the tightly packed homes on the hill-side street.

Firefighters were called at 9:21 p.m. to 28 Rosedale Avenue for a fully involved structure fire. The fire started to move to a house next door, but damage was minimal, according to one person who was at the scene.

Bradford City Police blocked off the short street, keeping bystanders at bay. Despite the bitter cold, residents were coming out to the street and lingering on unshoveled sidewalks as Bradford City firefighters battled the blaze.

At the nearby Crosby’s gas station, one of the employees first mistook the smell of smoke as something inside store.

“I smelled the smoke and I thought it was something coming from the back,” she said.

She heard the family was not in the home at the time of the blaze. “They said the mother was at work and the kids were with the sitter,” she explained.

A man who lives down the street was shovelling his driveway when his wife alerted him to the smoke.

“I didn’t even smell the smoke at first,” he said. “I was outside when my wife came down and said, ‘Can’t you smell the smoke?’”

“Thank goodness no one was home,” he added.

Another neighbor, Rich Thompson, was coming home from a church council meeting when he saw the ado. “By the time I got here, all you saw is smoke. It was fully involved by then.”

A young man living just a few houses down made note of how high the flames were. “My dad came into my room and said, ‘Look out your window,’” he said. “The flames were higher than the other houses.”

A second alarm was called for the fire, with Derrick City and the Bradford Rapid Intervention Team were dispatched to assist, while Bradford Township stood by with an engine at the city’s Central Fire Station.

Power lines in the area were reportedly downed in the blaze, but no further information was immediately available.