Crews from several Carbon County communities and Schuylkill County were called in for a two-alarm fire early this morning in the village of Hauto, Nesquehoning.

A fire broke out at a building on the 200 block of Yard Street around 2 a.m.

Hauto Fire Chief David Walls, who lives only several hundred feet from where the blaze started, said Wednesday morning that by the time he arrived at the fire station, which is located next to the building that burned, the structure was fully engulfed.

“Leaving the house, which is about 15 houses up, we saw a ball of fire in the sky,” Walls said, noting that he wasn’t sure how long it was burning before it was called in. “When we got down here at the fire company, the whole first floor, it is a basement, was totally engulfed and it was just spreading like crazy.

“By the time we were able to get lines established, it was just going too good and it was too deep to even make a difference,” he added.

Fire crews from Franklin Township, Lehighton, Mahoning Township, Jim Thorpe, Penn Forest Township, the three Nesquehoning fire companies, Summit Hill, Lansford, Weatherly and Rush Township, as well as Lehighton EMS responded and battled the fire.

Walls said that he had heard there was no one at the home at the time of the fire, but that a dog was unaccounted for. He was not sure if anyone lived there full-time.

Hauto Fire Company was up at the first site again around 8 a.m. after volunteers noticed that the fire was rekindling.

Walls said that the floor of the building is not safe so when he and two volunteers returned to the building, they had to put up a ladder on the side of the foundation to be able to spray the first floor.

“You couldn’t walk on the floor, that’s how bad it was,” he said.

An investigator would be looking at the building later today for a cause of the fire.

The building was former Hermitage Bar and Grill, which closed in 2009. It had served as a bar for decades.