DETROIT — Two adults and a 5-year-old were left homeless Saturday after an early morning fire tore through their home at 10 Birchwood St. home, destroying it and all their belongings.

Detroit fire Chief Don Chute said later Saturday that the fire, reported at 12:58 a.m., appeared to have started around a propane hot water heater in a closet beside the kitchen in the double-wide mobile home.

“It looks like it was either corrosion to a fitting or a split in the line,” Chute said of what sparked the fire.

The homeowner, Robert King, and a woman and child for whom he did not have names, were able to get two dogs out, he said. Firefighters rescued a cat from under a pile of debris in a corner of the home about 2 1/2 hours after the fire started, but one cat remains missing, Chute said. After waking up to the house full of smoke, King ran to the next-door neighbor’s house to report the fire, he said, adding that the neighbor is King’s relative.

Firefighters arrived at the scene about 10 minutes after it was reported, Chute said.

“I was on the first truck,” he said. “We pulled in and it was fully involved.”

About 35 firefighters from Detroit, Pittsfield, Troy, Dixmont, Newport, Burnham and Plymouth worked at the scene, he said. Somerset County Sheriff’s deputies, Central Maine Power Co. and Sebasticook Valley Ambulance also responded.

“We overhauled it for around five hours,” Chute said. “It was a tough one. Every room was full of bags and bags of clothing. That was what made it tough for us to maneuver. There was a lot of stuff piled up everywhere in the rooms. It was unreal.”

Also challenging was the fact that adjacent to the sheetrock, the rooms had tongue and groove pine walls, he said.

The Red Cross is helping the family with clothing and other needs and the fire department will help them until their insurance kicks in, Chute said. He said he believes they are staying with relatives next door.

No one was hurt, according to Chute, who also is chief of the Palmyra Fire Department. He said it was about 17 degrees early Saturday so water froze, causing icy conditions for everyone.