Courtesy of viewer Olivia Bernard

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Eight people, including five young children, were displaced from their homes in Lexington early this morning after a fire broke out.

The Lexington Fire Department told us that the fire started just before two in the morning in a building on Lenney Court, near Wilson Downing Road.

There were four apartments in the building. The fire forced all eight of the people who were inside to evacuate.

"My Cousin came over and she was yeling 'fire!' explained Jemale Edwards, who lives next door to the building that burned.

He says once he made sure his cousin and her kids were ok, he ran into the building to help others.

"As soon as you opened the door, smoke gushed out," Edwards said. "When I got upstairs, it was hard to breathe. So I had to open the top window there. The woman and her kids up there started coughing and couldn't breathe."

In that apartment were two eight-month olds and a two-year-old. Edwards says he helped the woman, her mother and the children get out.

Firefighters say eight people in all were displaced. They say of the five children inside at the time, two had been spending the night with a babysitter.

Two of the apartments received only light smoke damage, but we're told that the apartment where the fire started was "gutted," and the adjacent apartment suffered heavy damage.

We will have more for you on this story on WKYT News at 6.