By Alex Bridges -- Daily Staff Writer

BOYCE — Fire destroyed a Clarke County house on Tuesday and left a family homeless.

The Boyce Volunteer Fire Company received a call around 11:35 a.m. for a structure fire at 2471 Bishop Meade Road. By the time crews arrived, the house was engulfed in flames.

"The fire started outside the house, and a woman and her kids were home and they figured out there was a fire on the outside of the house," said Boyce Fire Chief Bryan Conrad. "They got on out, and they didn't call from the house 'cause they got on out of there, and then they had trouble getting somewhere where they could call. The woman left her cell phone in the house."

No injuries were reported by residents or firefighters, according to the chief.

Conrad said he did not know the name of the woman or her children.

The house was far back from Bishop Meade Road, and had been built recently.

"It was a brand new house," Conrad said.

The blaze, which is still under investigation, appeared to have started on the front porch and caught the vinyl siding on fire, the chief said.

"It was fully involved when the first truck got there ... and there wasn't much anybody could do about it," the chief added.

Crews with Blue Ridge, Enders and Shenandoah Farms from Clarke County, as well as the Greenwood and Millwood volunteer fire companies from Frederick County and Mount Weather, assisted Boyce in trying to extinguish the blaze, Conrad said.

Companies sometimes struggle to gather firefighters to respond to midday emergencies, but that didn't appear to be the case in this incident, the chief said.

"There's definitely some manpower issues for that time of day. There's no question about that," Conrad said. "But we had enough manpower, it's just manpower wasn't the issue. The issue was that the house was fully involved with fire when they got on the scene, and it wouldn't have made any difference if had 50 people there, it still would have been fully involved."

The blaze destroyed the house. But the residents have "a considerable amount of family right there, and so they'll probably just stay with some of them, I think. I told them to let me know if they needed help and we'd arrange it," Conrad said.

* Contact Alex Bridges at abridges@nvdaily.com