A three-alarm blaze destroyed three single-family homes and damaged several others in the Sumner Lake subdivision of Manassas on Wednesday afternoon. Two people sustained minor injuries and fire and rescue reported no fatalities.

The 911 calls began shortly after 3 p.m., according to City of Manassas assistant fire chief Leon Buckley. He said 47 "pieces of equipment" and 120 responders from Manassas, Manassas Park, Prince William County and Fairfax County showed up on scene at 8355 Tilllett Loop while engines from Fauquier and Loudoun counties filled in the vacancies at stations that sent assistance.

Buckley said that as of around 6:20 p.m., officials had yet to determine a cause of the inferno. He added that in the more than 20 years he has been on the Manassas force, he could not remember a fire within the city that took out multiple single-family houses, saying that usually happened to town houses.

As he spoke, gray smoke rose from blackened, smoldering remains, whipping eastward in the wind. One fire fighter walking across an apparatus ladder could be seen with a black cloth over his face to protect himself from inhaling the fumes.

An eyewitness reported seeing nothing expect "black smoke" minutes after the fire began.

"The house in the middle was totally engulfed," said Crystal Fuentes, a resident of the nearby Brentwood Apartments. "You could hear fireworks going off."

Fuentes said she heard a porch crumble and recorded a video on her phone that showed pillars of orange and red flames at a low level protruding from plumes of black and dark-gray smoke rising from the middle house.

"The embers were coming down," she said, explaining that flaming projectiles spread around the area to the point where it burned a hole in one man's shirt standing near her.

As for the actual blaze, she said that it seemed to take about half an hour before fire fighters contained the fire.

"It was really going, The more they put (water) on it, the high it was going," she said.

As smoke continued to drift around 6:50 p.m., Fuentes said, "Before, you couldn't even smell it like this. It was like a barbecue smell you could smell."

A nearby pavilion served as a center for victims to gather and meet up with Red Cross officials. Chaplains sent in from the fire and rescue crews were also charged with coordinating victim assistance with the Red Cross.

"Frankly, it frees us up to do this," said Hadden Culp, fire marshal and assistant fire chief for Prince William County.

Other groups outside of first responders were present on scene after fire fighters extinguished the main blaze, such as utility workers and Columbia Gas representatives, who checked underground lines for damage.

Manassas Mayor Hal Parrish skipped out on chairing a Northern Virginia Regional Commission meeting so he could survey the damage and meet with residents. He said he was out of the area when Manassas City Manager Lawrence Hughes notified him of the fire.

Regarding the performance of the fire departments, Parrish said, "They made a pretty good stop in a very bad situation." He added that he expected crews to be on scene "all night."