A Trotwood family is being assisted by the American Red Cross after flames broke out at their home on the 200 block of Lensdale Avenue Friday morning.

News Center 7 has learned that a woman, her boyfriend and five kids were inside the home when the blaze started around 8:30 a.m. Fire officials have not determined a definitive cause of the fire but said those inside the residence woke up this morning to smoke in the house. They retreated to a neighbor’s residence and crews encountered heavy smoke coming from the roof.

“We were all in the house sleeping and my oldest stepdaughter, she smelled the smoke and then she looked up and when she looked up she looked in the kitchen and there was a fire going,” said Levonna Randolph, the mother who lives at the residence. “Everybody just ran out of the house, basically.”

For a brief period of time, fire crews didn’t realize there was a second story to the house, according to fire officials. The belief was that there were merely an attic above the first floor. Crews, however, found a staircase of sorts hidden away in a bedroom closet. The fire was then quickly knocked down.

Among the items burned up in the fire were Christmas presents, pictures and toys.

“(We’ll) just take it day by day,” Randolph said. “That’s all I can do.”

No damage estimates have been made available.