At least 20 residents of a Dingess Street apartment complex were left homeless after the three-story building was leveled by a raging fire that sent two to a local hospital.

Statements from tenants of the apartment said a ground-floor occupant of the building put a can of spray paint into a microwave and caused the fire.

The State Fire Marshal's office was at the site of the fire on Dingess Street Monday for several hours investigating the cause of the blaze.

Assistant State Fire Marshal Jason Baltic said the cause of the fire in the Fox Apartments building is still "undetermined."

Baltic recovered the microwave and was photographing it during the investigation yesterday afternoon.

He said there were reports that a paint can had been placed into the microwave was the cause of the fire, but said he had not determined if it was to blame.

Several of the displaced occupants who were at the shelter set up at the National Guard Armory in Monaville said it was a paint can in the microwave that caused the fire.

Baltic said the resident of the ground-floor apartment, who was identified by the occupants at the shelter as Steven Marcum, said Marcum said he was warming butter on a stove when it caught fire.

"There's a lot of damage and it's going to be extremely difficult to try to find out what started the fire," Baltic said. "Once we get in there and actually find something, we'll see where we go from there."

Logan Fire Chief Scott Beckett said the fire call came into the Logan County 911 office at 6 p.m. on Sunday and his firemen battled the blaze for 10 hours. On Monday around 1 p.m., crews were back on the scene extinguishing a hot spot in the rubble of the apartment.

Beckett said the fire also resulted in the closure of the West Virginia Department of Veterans Affairs, U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Labor Federal Black Lung offices nearby and caused all occupants of an adjacent apartment building to be evacuated and moved to the shelter.

"It was bad. The whole building is gone," Beckett said. "We had two adjacent structures less than a foot apart from the apartment building and we were able to keep the fire out of both of those. We had several large explosions inside the apartment building and we're assuming they were using 20-pound propane tanks for heat. The explosions were large and instituted the collapse of the building and we had to pull (the firemen) out.

"Two of the occupants were transported to the hospital. One was transferred to another hospital for burns and it was in his apartment where the fire started. One other occupant was treated and released."

Clifford Bryant, who lived in one of the second-floor apartments, said James Hielema knocked on his door and said warned of the fire.

"I looked down at my dad's feet and saw smoke," Bryant said. "A woman named Goldie was trying to go in and get a makeup bag or something and I rescued her instead of my dog."

Bryant said his dog perished in the fire because he wasn’t able to go back in to get the pit bull pup.

Michael Hanshaw, who lived in one of the apartments, said he had trouble getting out safely.

"The floors, steps and stuff was on fire," Hanshaw said as he looked at what was left of his home. "We'll have to get another place now and start over. We lost everything."

Several family members who all lived in the building were gathered together at the National Guard Armory at Monaville Monday afternoon.

Alma Workman, who lived in Apartment No. 4, and her daughter, Sylvia Forshey, who lived across the hallway in Apartment No. 1, said they weren’t able to save anything from the fire.

"We hope someone will help us, especially since it's Christmas," Forshey said.

Andrea Marcum, another resident of the building, said the gas meters and electrical box for all the apartments were in her dwelling.

"I didn't know what was going on," Andrea Marcum said. "There was black smoke all through my house and there were no smoke detectors downstairs. Within one minute, everything was burning. We didn't get our purses or anything."

Hielema, who also lived in the building, went through knocking on doors and urging people to evacuate. He said he had trouble getting Steven Marcum to leave his apartment and Marcum kept trying to go back in.

"There was flames coming out around the door and into the hallway and he was holding onto the door not wanting to leave," Hielema said. "But, I got everybody out."

All the occupants were evacuated, Beckett said.

Bryant said Hielema's courage saved lives.

"He's the real hero," Bryant said.

Beckett said he doesn't completely believe the story that a cooking fire caused so much damage.

"He's saying he was cooking, the fire got out of hand and he tried to put it out and couldn't," Beckett said. "But, there's extenuating circumstances. This was too big of a fire (that went) that far, that fast."

Andrea Marcum's husband, James Marcum, said the family lost everything they had in the fire.

"The bad thing about it is that it's almost Christmas and we lost everything," James Marcum said.

Other family members who escaped unharmed were David Domain and Steve Berry.

"We were out until 4 a.m. to get it extinguished," Beckett said. "It was a huge fire."

No firemen were injured, Beckett said.

"It was a miracle," Beckett said.

Jim Stevenson with the American Red Cross said donations were collected from area businesses and the Appalachian Dream Center to help feed the victims of the fire. He said the Armory would be used until the families could be relocated to the Appalachian Dream Center at Holden. Stevenson, who came to Logan in February 2009 for a similar apartment fire that left several homeless, said Kroger and McDonald's had donated food and drinks to the families.

"We're working with the Salvation Army to get these people moved into the Dream Center," Stevenson said.