Six people in apartments above the Green Hanger dry cleaners at 146 Woodford Ave. in Missoula escaped serious injury when an early morning fire Friday sent them fleeing into the street, one of the residents said.

“Someone screamed ‘Fire!’ ” at about 4:30 a.m., said Helen Keremedjiev. “I took it seriously. We live in a quiet, safe neighborhood and we never hear such things.”

She looked out the window and saw flames licking from the second-floor deck along the southeast corner of the building, she said. “My first reaction was, ‘I’m going to change the channel. This isn’t happening,’ But then I thought, ‘This is for real. I can’t put it on pause.’ ”

Keremedjiev, 30, said she barely had time to fling a sweater over her pajamas and put on her clogs before running down the exterior stairwell with five of the building’s other tenants, also in their nightclothes. That stairwell is near the apartment most heavily damaged by the fire.

“I could feel the heat above me, and ashes falling around me,” she said.

Assistant Fire Chief Jeff Brandt said city firefighters, dispatched at 4:28 a.m., found significant fire and smoke when they arrived. The fire appears to have started in an exterior electrical fixture, said Fire Chief Jason Diehl.