Two people died and two more are still unaccounted for in a 4-alarm blaze that ravaged multiple two-story homes in Jersey City early this morning, Jersey City Fire Chief Darren Rivers said.

The fire, on Grant Avenue between Rose and Ocean Avenues, also displaced more than 35 people, officials said.

By the time firefighters arrived at the scene of the fire, which was reported at around 1 a.m. and placed under control at 5:30 a.m., a small church at 28 1/2 Grant Avenue -- where the blaze started -- was engulfed in flames, Rivers said.

An 81-year-old and an 80-year-old couple, and their two children, ages 59 and 56, were in the church at the time of the fire, Rivers said. Authorities have not said whose bodies they have located and have not released the names of the four people.

Family members of the couple and their children who live in an attached two-story home at 28 Grant Avenue "heard banging on the wall" just as the fire was beginning to escalate, Rivers said.

After leaving their own building, those family members saw smoke coming from 28 1/2 and one of them "kicked the door in and was met by heavy flames," Rivers said.

The family member was trying to save those still in 28 1/2, Rivers said.

The fire affected six two-story homes at 26, 28, 28 1/2, 30, 32 and 34 Grant Ave., Rivers said.

He said he didn't know if and when the nearly three dozen people displaced by the fire would be able to return to their homes. The local chapter of the American Red Cross have set up a temporary shelter at the Mary McLeod Bethune Life Center at 140 Martin Luther King Dr.



Two firefighters have been sent to the hospital for non-life-threatening injuries, Rivers said.



Rivers said that if victims of the fire were found in 28 1/2 Grant Ave., the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office would have to do an investigation before the victims could be removed.

A man with a badge who was leaving the scene this morning identified himself as a member of the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office, but declined to be interviewed.

Joe Shine, a freelance photographer for The Jersey Journal, said that heavy machinery was being brought in to tear up the roadway so a gas line could be closed.