A three-alarm structure fire shut down much of Meyran Avenue early Wednesday afternoon,… A three-alarm structure fire shut down much of Meyran Avenue early Wednesday afternoon, causing an estimated $100,000 in damage and leaving a number of current and former Pitt students without housing.

The blaze began around 2:30 p.m. on the third floor of 324 Meyran. City firemen arrived within five minutes and quickly entered the burning building, witnesses said. No one was reported injured, and the building was empty when the fire started.

Several fire chiefs reported that the cause of the fire is still unknown.

“It was terrifying,” said Carol Labad, who lives next door to the damaged building and first reported the fire. “They won’t let me go in and check if anything was damaged.”

Labad said the firemen wearing brown and yellow-coats could be seen scrambling across the structures’ roof, cutting holes and ripping up shingles even as flames shot out of the building’s front windows.

Nearly 40 firemen brought powerful fire hoses up to the front of the house and into the front door and blasted the flames with water.

It only took them a few minutes to get the flames under control, she said.

Jamie Ray, a recent Pitt graduate who lives in 326 Meyran, was visibly shaken after the fire. She stood across the street with a group of friends, surveying the damage to her third floor apartment.

“I just graduated from Pitt and now this happens,” Ray said. “I don’t know where I’m going to live or what I’m going to do. I don’t even know how much damage there was or who is responsible.”

Fire chief Darryl Jones said the fire, smoke and water destroyed the entire third floor of 324 Meyran. The building on the left, Ray’s building, also suffered smoke and water damage to the third floor, while the building on the right apparently went undamaged.

The building where the fire started sustained about $75,000 in damage, while Ray’s building received about $20,000.

“It’s always a dangerous situation, always,” Jones said. “With an area like Oakland, one small fire can quickly turn into a whole city block burning. We can’t let that happen.”

Jones explained his company’s procedures when responding to a structure fire in an area like Oakland.

The strategy involves a two part attack. One unit of firemen are responsible for “venting” the building, or cutting holes in the roof so the fire spreads upward, not along the row of houses. Another unit “attacks” the fire at the same time, he said, fighting the fire from underneath with hoses and axes.

It’s an effective strategy when you need to put out a fire in a high-density area like Oakland, Jones said.

“We had a great response today. We were right around the corner,” Jones said. “We were definitely in the building within five minutes, that’s an important window in terms of spreading.”

Witnesses said the firemen’s work and the sheer scale of the response impressed them. At one point, at least seven fire trucks could be see lined up along the 300 block of Meyran, along with nearly 40 emergency responders in full fire gear and a handful of other city vehicles.

Jones said that any report of a structure fire in Pittsburgh automatically gets 17 responders, and because Oakland is considered a “high-value” area, reports here get eight extra men. More firemen are then called in by a battalion commander, he said.