MINNEAPOLIS — The chaos erupted in the night. Dazed residents spilled out of apartments into hallways thick with smoke. As alarms sounded, they struggled down staircase after staircase. They desperately dialed relatives on cellphones, begging for instructions about how to get out.

“We need help!” Sharmarke Ali recalled hearing his father plead in a call that came before dawn.

A fast-moving, smoky fire on the 14th floor of a high-rise in a Minneapolis public housing complex left at least five people dead and three others hospitalized in the early hours of Wednesday, officials said. Residents of The Cedars apartment complex — many of them low-income older people and Somali-Americans — described a frantic, confusing evacuation. Four people were found dead in a hallway. Another person died, officials said, after being found ailing in a stairwell.

The blaze struck during a significant snowstorm, leaving scores of residents gathered in coats and snow hats on Wednesday morning in the lobby of their fire-worn building. Some were still waiting for answers. A pair of brothers said they had yet to find their father.

“A very tragic night at the beginning of the holiday weekend,” John Fruetel, the fire chief of Minneapolis, said at a news conference.