Massive fire destroys home in Buckhead neighborhood

ATLANTA - Residents in a Buckhead neighborhood were woken up Wednesday morning to a massive fire that ripped through a nearby home and threatened to quickly spread.

The fire broke out around 2 a.m. at a two-story home on the 5000 block of North Ivy Road.

Kristen Bayless said she was terrified when neighbors banged on her door in the middle of the night. She quickly realized the house next door was up in flames.

"You just see this wall of orange," she said. "Then you fear for … 'What do I need to grab in the house or where do I need to go quickly?"

The flames quickly spread through the 4,300-square-foot home next door and then were carried by the wind into the trees in the home's backyard.

"I saw the wind blowing. There were embers in the trees coming closer and our fence caught on fire," Bayless said. "So I thought ‘We need to run.’"

While she and her children ran out of the house, her husband grabbed a hose and tried to fend off the flames. Firefighters already on the scene battling the original house fire quickly sprung into action to stop the blaze from spreading.

Thankfully, the people living in the house that caught on fire managed to get out unharmed, but the home appears to be a total loss.

Bayless says she knows it could have ended much worse.

"We're feeling really blessed to be alive and blessed that our house didn't catch on fire and that everyone got out," she said.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.