Firefighters had strong winds and freezing temperatures to contend with Wednesday morning as they battled a huge fire at a vacant apartment complex in northwest Atlanta.

The two-story building in the 1100 block of Joseph E. Boone Boulevard was fully involved in wind-whipped flames when firefighters arrived around 5:15 a.m., Atlanta fire Battalion Chief Edward Hill said.

Hill said crews immediately went into “defensive” mode, battling the flames from the outside the burning building.

“It was too dangerous to even think about going inside,” Hill told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The main thing is no one gets hurt and everyone goes home in the morning.”

Hill said that while the cause of the fire remained under investigation, it was likely started by vagrants.

“That’s the problem we have with these vacant apartments,” he said. “You have homeless people living in them and subsequently they start fires and this is the result of it.”