Rochester firefighters credit neighbors with saving the life of a woman after a fire in her home late Monday night.

The fire broke out around 11 p.m. on Long Acre Road near the Irondequoit border.

Neighbors behind, next door and across the street heard the calls for help from one of the residents who lived in the house. They reacted and ended up saving their neighbor's life.

Rochester Deputy Fire Chief Martin McMillan said crews arrived on scene quickly, but the home was already full of smoke and flames when they got there.

Quick-reacting neighbors saw the fire and called 911. They heard screams for help from Scott, who lives in the house, and then went inside to save his mother.

"It was getting pretty smoky by the time we got out," said neighbor Jim Larrabee. "We asked who else was in the house, and he said his mother. He led me to the bedroom. She had some mobility issues, but she was able to walk with some assistance to the front door."

"Once Jim brought her to the front door. a bunch of us helped pick her up and we carried her over to a safe place across the street," said Brian Abramson, another neighbor. "We all heard an explosion and we looked up and the house was engulfed in flames. It was like that."

The men who rescued her didn't even know her name, but they were willing to go into a burning house to rescue her.

"I think we could have had a fatality here, that's pure speculation, but I can tell by the amount of smoke heat and flames that were coming from this house when we pulled up it would not have surprised me if someone had not made a rescue and got the people out prior to us," said Chief McMillan.

The woman inside the home was taken to Strong Hospital for evaluation. No one else was hurt.

McMillan said since the fire was so close to the border, three Irondequoit companies along with the Rochester Fire Department responded.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Monroe County Fire Wire