ALBANY — Bimbo Bakeries worker Ralph Soler was standing outside the North Manning Boulevard plant at 6:20 a.m. Friday, on a break with three coworkers, when he noticed black smoke rising above the closely built homes across the street.

"It's summertime," Stoler recalled thinking. "There ain't nobody burning no wood."

That's when he said he saw the flames and screamed for his colleagues. The four men took off running, one dialing 911 as the others started pounding on front doors.

"We even broke a few windows just to get some attention," Soler said. "Because we knew there were kids over here."

Within minutes, dozens of people were pouring out of the homes.

The three-alarm blaze began at 71 N. Manning Blvd. — an abandoned building with a history of police calls and code violations within the last two years — and quickly spread to three nearby duplexes.

No one was injured but about 40 people, including more than 20 children, lost their homes.

"I don't want to move again. I want to be in my home," Shaquinta Melendez, a 40-year-old single mother, said with tears streaming down her face.

Melendez escaped an abusive relationship in 2014, seeking support from a local women's shelter where she and her six children lived for months. Since then, the family has moved three times on a roughly annual basis.

"I basically just started over from scratch," Melendez said, cuddling her 7-year-old son as he wiped her tears away. "I'm trying to keep it together for my kids. I don't want them to see me cry, but it's just so stressful."

Just weeks ago, Melendez had bought everyone a bedroom set and furnished the entire apartment. The family had been sleeping on roll-up mattresses since September.

This, she said, was the neighborhood she intended to stay in. The kids — who range in age from 7 to 16 years old — liked the schools and had made friends in the neighborhood.

"We had finally gotten settled," Melendez said. The Red Cross gave the family temporary assistance Friday while she started yet another search for a new home.

Investigators are still probing what started the fire, and have not ruled out suspicious activity, although "they are leaning towards accidental," Albany Fire Chief Warren Abriel said Friday afternoon.

The first 911 call came in at 6:21 a.m., Abriel said, and when crews arrived on the scene three minutes later they found heavy fire across the back of three buildings. Police evacuated residents from seven nearby homes as fire fighters battled the blaze.

"It was just a large volume of fire to contend with," Abriel said. The rowhouses "are very close together and the fire spread rapidly."

Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan, who came to the scene, called the vacant house where the flames originated a "problem" property.

In 2015, when the residence was occupied, police were called there ten times to settle arguments between neighbors about kids playing in the yard and dogs on the loose, Albany police spokesman Steve Smith said.

By June 2016, the house was vacant and police were called twice to board up the building, Smith said. Within the last year, the mayor said the city had imposed two fines on the property for code violations and took emergency measures to stabilize the structure.

Citing mortgage default, a bank moved to foreclose on the property April 20, Sheehan said. She identified the property owner as Willie Glover.

"We know that vacant buildings can be magnets for trouble," the mayor said, adding the city recently hired a staff member to deal with abandoned properties across Albany.

Amber Wilridge — who lived in one of the burned homes with her five children, ages 5 to 14 — said she'd been concerned about the abandoned building for months.

"It was beat on the inside," Wilridge said, recalling pigeons and neighbors who feared a collapse. "It was a hazard."

Her neighbor, 34-year-old Dawn Whitman, said she'd been calling the city at least three times a month asking for a demolition. She said "adult squatters" were often inside the blighted building "all night long."

On Friday morning, Whitman said she was roused awake by a "pounding" sound. "Then I heard a man running up my stairs, yelling, 'Fire! Fire! Fire!'" she recalled. "I looked and the whole back of the house next door was on fire."

Whitman, her six children — ranging from 3 to 14 years old — and their dog all "trampled down the stairs" to escape the flames, she said.

"I thought I was going to die. ... Now I have nothing," Whitman said. At least 13 people and two dogs lived in that duplex, which is now a total loss, she said.

Donation information Interfaith Partnership for the Homeless is accepting donations of clothing, food, bedding, and any other materials for the people displaced by the fire. Contact the organization at 518-434-8021 or drop donations off at 176 Sheridan Ave. The city of Albany and SEFCU have also partnered to create a N. Manning Boulevard Relief Fund. Donations can be made at any SEFCU branch. See More Collapse

Some 35 to 40 firefighters fought the blaze from the outside, pushed back by heavy flames. In addition to the Albany Fire Department, crews from Troy, Watervliet and Green Island also fought the fire.

At one point, firefighters reunited a tearful and overjoyed Wilridge with her cat, who was soaking wet after being saved from one of the homes.

Four buildings were badly burned, two of which will likely be knocked down, Abriel said. A fifth home suffered water damage.

Brittany Bryant, 28, stood on the sidewalk in pajamas, watching the firefighters with her husband, their two daughters — aged 18 months and 13 years — and the family dog. About five minutes after the first shouts and banging on the door, "our whole house was on fire," Bryant said.

"I'm just so grateful for these people," she said, referring to the bakery workers who sounded the alarm. "Because I don't know if we would have made it out of the house in time."