FREEPORT — Braving fire and smoke Tuesday night, a borough police officer made a mad dash inside a pair of burning downtown apartment buildings.

Cpl. Scott Hess went back and forth, and up and down stairs of the attached buildings to alert tenants of the fast-moving fire. He also helped evacuate several residents, including a young mother and her infant child.

"He was like Robo-Cop,"said Angelina Faiella, who lives with her 3-year-old daughter in one of the buildings. "He was banging on the doors and yelling as loud as he could to make sure everyone got out."

Within a few short minutes, flames had swept through the third floor and were devouring the roof. The massive fire was on.

But thanks largely to Hess, 10 or so residents in the buildings at Fifth and Market streets were able to escape uninjured, with little more than the clothes on their backs.

And thanks to some 150 firefighters from 15 departments, the fire just before 10 p.m. did not spread to other nearby structures, including a large office building beside the apartments.

"It was a bad one,"said Chief Dominic Ravotti of the Freeport Volunteer Fire Department. "We knew it was going to be a long night as soon as we got on scene."

The state police fire marshal is investigating the cause of the blaze that apparently started in the rear of the apartment building on Fifth Street.

The fire soon grew and had taken over the top floor of both three-story buildings that are connected to one another but do not share a common entrance or exit.

The brick buildings date back to the early 1900s and, from the exterior, are distinguishable from one another by color — the Fifth Street apartment is a shade of green; the Market Street apartment is blue.

Authorities believe each building had three apartment units, all apparently occupied. It was not immediately known how many tenants were living in the apartments, but all those residents are homeless now.

Ayoung passer-by could have been the first to signal the alarm.

"Akid ran down the street to the department, saying, 'The apartment building's on fire,'"said Hess. "I came out and saw flames, contacted dispatch and then went over to see what I could do."

Faiella, almost simultaneously, had looked outside her laundry room window and spotted flames from the rear of the adjoining building.

"At first I thought it was fireworks,"she said. "I saw bright lights going off. But then I saw the flames traveling up to the roof."

Then came Hess' booming voice and the noise of pounding on the doors.

The officer saw flames from the back end of the buildings and knew he didn't have much time. He went inside one building then the other to rouse tenants and to assist those in need of help getting out.

"The first floor was fine when I got inside,"he said. "But the second floor was hot with a lot of smoke."

Upstairs in the green building, he met a woman and her dog. Then a mother with a baby. He guided them all down the stairway to safety.

Faiella, who lives in a ground floor apartment in the blue building, quickly dressed her 3-year-old, who moments earlier was in pajamas, and gathered up a few of the child's belongings.

Hess had made it to over to the other building as Faiella was scrambling to get out.

"He even took time to help me find my cat,"said Faiella, who sought shelter across the street at Early Bird Bill's bar.

The bar owner, a white-haired woman known by regulars only as "Willie," provided food, drink and sympathy to tenants throughout the night.

Faiella, whose parents, Dan and Albina Sutara of Sarver, own the Market Street building, returned to the building to make sure tenants in the other two apartments were out.

Ravotti and other Freeport firefighters first on the scene also joined in the search for people inside.

"We did as much as we could until it got too hot,"he said. "We believed everyone was out when we had to end the search. At least we hoped so."

The flames in back of both buildings had spawned into a raging fire on the top floors and roof.

"By then it was fully involved from the first to third floors,"Ravotti said. "I knew it was a heavy fire and we needed multiple ladder trucks. It was basically an exterior attack."

Ladder trucks from Saxonburg and Sarver in Butler County, and Kittanning No. 6 and Tarentum would prove imperative in stopping the fire.

Acrew armed with water lines was also sent up to the roof of the office complex next to the Fifth Street apartment building to help with more waterlines.

Firefighters pummeled the apartment buildings with water drawn from hydrants, tankers and even the Allegheny River.

The force of the pressurized water periodically popped loose pieces of smoldering shingles and sent them to the pavement below.

Smoke from the burning buildings wafted across Fifth Street, a main thoroughfare in the borough, and at times was so thick that it darkened the lighted Christmas wreaths and stars fixed on lamp posts.

The thick smoke caused eyes to water and sinuses to burn. The smell caused choking and coughing.

Crowds of onlookers swelled as time went on. Some stood in the doorways of the mammoth and long since vacant J.H. Shoop &Sons clothing store.

Acommon sight throughout the night was camera-equipped cell phones held up against the night sky by those hoping to document the fire.

Scott Gildner of neighboring Brackenridge, Allegheny County, was among a line of spectators gathered in front of the Freeport Public Library.

"I heard it on the scanner and I'm here out of curiosity," said Gildner, a former Freeport resident who lived in a house on top of a hill nearby. "This is one helluva fire."

In back of the municipal building, a somewhat festive group had found a perch on a set of Norfolk Southern tracks overlooking Fifth Street.

Freeport native Don Beck of Ford City was drinking at the Eagles Club a block or so away when he heard the sirens close by. He made a beeline to the railroad tracks that he knew would offer the best vantage point.

"It wasn't bad at first,"Beck said of the fire. "But boy, it took off quick.

"It's kind of a shame," he said. "It's the holiday. Afire on Dec. 11; that's the last thing you need."

By midnight the fire was under enough control that the ladder trucks were retired from the fight. It was considered safe to send a crew into each apartment building.

Still, hot spots were visible on the roof and in eaves even after 1 a.m.

Ravotti did not have a damage estimate but guessed it would easily exceed $100,000. He said the third floors of both buildings were gutted. He did not know if the buildings were salvageable.

Meanwhile, Salvation Army volunteers manned a spot in the fire hall around the corner, offering water and hot coffee for tired firefighters, and necessities for tenants displaced by the fire.

"The whole community came together,"Faiella said. "We lost a lot but it's good to see people coming together to help. It's Christmas, you know."