AUGUSTA — Shawn Willette had just stepped outside his apartment above the United Community Living Center on the east side of Augusta on Sunday evening to smoke a cigarette.

When he lifted his head, he saw smoke billowing from the third-floor balcony of the building next door at 20 Spruce St. Flames jumped to the roof.

“Fire! Fire!” Willette yelled. “The building’s on fire!”

Ian Watson and Oakk, who goes by just one name, were inside Willette’s apartment. Oakk heard Willette and assumed their building was on fire. He, too, ran outside. Watson followed. The flames now lapped the side of the nearby building.

The three of them, plus nearby Brett Glidden, sprinted to the building yelling: “Fire! Get out!” Watson took the front, Oakk took the side and Willette, the back. Glidden stood back and yelled.

The fire, which occurred around 8:15 p.m., tore through the third floor and roof, Augusta fire Chief David Groder said in an incident report. Crews struggled to put out the fire, “with cold temps and elevated wind at the time of the incident as well as being down two rescues that were on other calls,” Groder said.

The occupants of six apartments were displaced, the fire department’s report said, and the cause appeared to be “improper disposal of smoking materials.”

Spruce Street was lit up by emergency lights for hours, Glidden said, while crews put out the flames and examined the damage. At least some apartments on the third floor were a total loss, said Watson, who spoke to the building owner Monday morning.

Oakk said a woman on the third floor ran through flames to save herself. Her apartment had already burned, and her cat is still missing.

“Your life can change in an instant. I don’t think any of them expected to lose their place of living, their residence,” he said.

Oakk, Watson and Glidden are homeless. Willette has an apartment through the United Community Living Center at 12 Spruce St. and spent years living on Augusta’s streets.

They said they know what it’s like to need a helping hand — and that’s part of the reason they sprinted to help.

“We feel like we’ve kind of been thrown out by society, our parents, our grandparents, our entire families, and the way we get treated by some people,” Oakk said. “But that doesn’t stop us from being ourselves and wanting to help people.”

Willette even offered his apartment to several of the building’s tenants to stay warm while crews fought the fire. He gave one man’s dog a bowl of water.

“If you think about it, everybody that’s homeless now — at some point in time, they worked hard, had a place,” Willette said. “They had a streak of bad luck, and now they’re suffering.”

Betty St. Hilaire, the president and founder of United Community Living Center, a new daytime homelessness service center, said the bravery of the four men was reflective of Augusta’s homeless population.

Often, she said, people in stable housing assume homeless people are a monolith of mental health issues and addiction.

Some downtown and historic district property owners have opposed full-service, low-barrier shelter proposals, citing neighborhood character and potential safety concerns. Augusta police also arrest homeless people at a much higher rate than the general public, much of the time for trespassing.

That perspective does not capture the full picture, St. Hilaire said.

“What I see is the heart — that most of these folks will give you the shirt off their back,” St. Hilaire said. “They would share their last cigarette, their last dollar, their last whatever, with someone that was in need because they know what it feels like to be in need.”