The cause of the blaze, which consumed two buildings of the apartment complex on Tattersall Drive off Fayetteville Road about a mile north of The Streets at Southpoint, was under investigation Thursday night, said Battalion Chief Ernest Jannetta. Officials still weren't sure in which of two buildings the fire started.

The fire was the second large blaze at a Durham apartment complex within the last year. Last April, fire destroyed 19 units at the Royal Oaks Apartments on Weymouth Street, not far from the former South Square Mall area. No one was injured in Thursday's blaze, Jannetta said.

Five fire engines and three ladders and a squad were dispatched to the scene, Jannetta said, estimating that 28 firefighters were on scene to fight the blaze. At 4:30 p.m., emergency dispatch called for all available engines to report to the scene, but Jannetta said the county, not the city, made the call.

From beyond the yellow emergency tape, residents who wandered out of nearby apartments could see a bank of dense white smoke through the doorway of a second-floor residence. From higher ground, onlookers could see through the collapsed roof of one of the buildings.

Wilson had just come home from her job as the in-school suspension teacher at Chewning Middle School when an unusual sound drew her out of her apartment. "I just heard this noise at my door. It sounded like when you ruffle plastic. It kept getting louder and louder," said Wilson. After opening her front door to discover the burning breezeway and stairs, Wilson knew she had to get out. "I came down the steps sideways to keep the flames from catching my clothes," she said. It was about 4 p.m. when Takisha Gordon pulled into a parking space in front of an apartment adjacent to the burning buildings and noticed tall flames shooting from the roofs. "I saw it and I called and I couldn't get an answer through 911. I called several times and then I ran up to the leasing office. I just opened the door and said, 'There's a fire!' " Gordon said.

Not long after fire trucks began arriving on the scene, Sherri Pace, who lives in a unit on the opposite side of the complex from where the fire was, said she heard what sounded like an explosion. "My walls shook. I had a glass of water on the table and the water actually spilled out. That's how loud it was," she said. Other neighbors described hearing what sounded like "a big boom." Kim Morrison was coming home from work when she heard what sounded to her like a car backfiring.

Janetta said investigators aren't yet able to explain the sound of the explosion at this point in the investigation. Wilson's son, Jamal, left for the bank 10 minutes before his mother fled the building, he said. When he returned to the complex to find it swarming with fire engines and police cruisers, he said he ran toward his apartment building and found it swallowed by the blaze. "When I realized what building, I didn't know if my mom got out," Jamal Wilson said. He soon found her at the apartment complex, shaken but safe. Wilson and the other families displaced by the fire began meeting with a Red Cross representative to discuss housing options and further assistance Thursday evening.

Wilson said the apartment management company would put her in a new unit for Thursday night but that she hadn't yet renewed her renters' insurance and didn't know what she would do about her lost possessions. "I had some very expensive paintings I adored, and my mother's family Bible, and my mother is deceased," she said, her eyes brimming with tears. "And all my clothes, my son's clothes, shoes, my coffee pots ... I don't know what I'll do without my coffee tomorrow."