"Flames were just coming up," Harville tells WOKV's Jared Halpern. "I was on the second floor and the flames were just shooting up."

Harville quickly woke up five other people sleeping in the two story wood-framed home. An elderly woman was able to escape from a downstairs bedroom, but three other people were stuck on the home's roof after escaping from upper-level windows.

"I didn't take nothing," Nick Paul said. "I just knew I had to get out. I didn't worry about anything, I just got out."

Paul jumped from the roof then found a few wood pallets to lean against the structure and help others get down from the roof.

The house on East 7th Street sits just feet from the two homes next door. Both those houses also caught fire.

Firefighters say one house was empty, residents inside the other were able to escape.

Smoke detectors were not operating in Harville's home. He says the homeowner, who he rents from, took the batteries out.

"We could have all been dead if it wasn't for the cats doing what they were doing," Lisa Kimmerly said, still barefoot and wrapped in a blanket.