About 30 people have had to pack up their belongings and find a new place to stay after an early Monday morning fire reached Patterson House apartments.

The three-alarm fire started at an abandoned building next to the apartment complex. While all residents had to evacuate, none were reportedly injured. Eugene Springfield Fire responded at about 4 a.m. Monday and extinguished the flames in two and a half hours, according to the department spokesperson Kelsey Hunter.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, she added. Owners of the Patterson House were not immediately available for comment. Residents said they were told to take all their belongings out of the building as it would soon be boarded up. Their possessions faced smoke and water damage.

Resident Noah Palmer told The Register-Guard he woke up to the sound of what he thought was hail at 3:45 a.m. He opened his curtain and saw flames instead. Palmer said he then threw on his clothes and ran out of his room just as his windows exploded.

"Hearing those windows blow up was so freaky," Palmer said.

He knocked on neighbors' doors to make sure others knew it was time to get out.

Resident Casey Norrish was thankful for the knock. He lived on the other side of the building, further from the flames. It would be a chaotic start to the school year for the building's many student residents, he told The Register-Guard as he packed his possessions into a car.

"We're kind of worried about that ourselves," Norrish, a student at Oregon State University, said.

His stuff was less of a concern.

"I have insurance," he said. "That's the reason why I'm so calm."

Volunteers and staff from the Red Cross were available as residents removed their belongings. Volunteers gave residents food, flip flops for those that evacuated barefoot and other kinds of support.

Carisa Hettich, executive director of the Red Cross Southwest Oregon Chapter, said the No. 1 disaster Red Cross responds to is single family home fires.

"People often don't think of that," Hettich said. "They think of big tornadoes, hurricanes and stuff that hits the national news, but we respond to two or three fires a day all across the region."

To be prepared for fires, people should check that they have working smoke alarms and make safety plans with their housemates, she said. In a fire emergency, people have about two minutes to escape.

People interested in receiving free smoke alarms from the Red Cross can go to their website at: https://www.redcross.org/local/oregon/about-us/our-work/home-fire-campaign.html

Contact reporter Tatiana Parafiniuk-Talesnick at Tatiana@registerguard.com or 541-521-7512, and follow her on Twitter @TatianaSophiaPT.