The scene of the fire at Linwood Square in Roxbury. (Boston Fire Department)
ROXBURY (WBZ-AM) -- A fire tore through a building on Linwood Square in Roxbury Thursday morning.
Firefighters responded around 5:20 a.m. to find heavy flames in the occupied three-story brownstone. Two people got out safely. Nobody was injured.
Neighbors said the owner of the building had been collecting junk for some time, and said they've been complaining.
"All of the neighbors have been calling consistently to report it," one woman said. "The front of the house used to be piled up with junk, as well as the back of the house ... everybody in the neighborhood has been concerned. We've been concerned about vermin, we've been concerned about fire, we've been concerned about just the look of the junk."
Boston Fire Commissioner Joseph Finn wouldn't confirm a hoarding situation, but said the city has deemed the property a "dangerous building" for a few years.
"It was certainly challenging with the conditions inside the building," he said. "There were a lot of belongings inside the building, so we were concerned about that ... We had to pull the firefighters out because the building is marked as a dangerous building, and we had to get everybody out because of situations inside the building."
Finn said investigators believe the fire began on the third floor, but said the cause of the fire was not yet known.
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Bernice Corpuz (@BerniceWBZ) reports