SHAMOKIN - A vacant building near Sunbury and Shamokin streets caught fire late Wednesday night.
The fire at 717-719 N. Shamokin St. was first reported shortly after 10 p.m.
City police said at the scene that a man came to the station to report the building was ablaze.
Thick gray smoke wafted from the second-story windows toward the building's front while flames shot from the second floor at the building's rear.
Firefighters attacked the blaze from all sides, donning masks and climbing ladders to break windowpanes; from the ground, shooting water from hoses onto the flames.
The building is owned by Larry Burda, said Rick Bozza, code enforcement officer.
Burda's maintenance employee, Christopher Lloyd, said at the scene the building
had no electricity and had not been inhabited since approximately 2005.
"It's been off for a while," he said of the electric service.
It was currently used for storage, he said, with the majority of items such as furniture and antiques stored in the building's first floor.
Many onlookers gathered across the street to watch the event unfold, some using cameras and others using camera phones to snap photos or record video, many others simply gawking at the scene.
Like those in the crowd, Lloyd said he, too, was alerted to a fire when he heard sirens.
"We heard (the sirens), then I saw the smoke," he said.
Cause to be determined
The building neighbors an empty lot where a pair of buildings had been knocked down this summer after a partial collapse.
Bozza said all the buildings north of the burning structure toward Sunbury Street are vacant.
Firefighters were continuing to extinguish the blaze as of 10:45 p.m. and no official word on the cause or details on the attack were immediately available.