A two-alarm fire heavily damaged an un-occupied home in Elkhart Friday morning.

Extremely cold temperatures challenged firefighters.

Smoke was seen coming from the basement of a building at 6th and Indiana just after 8:30AM.

Because the home had been divided into several apartments over the years, false walls made it easy for the fire to travel all the way to the attic.

Some frozen equipment slowed the effort to extinguish the fire.

Battalion Chief John Foy of the Elkhart Fire Department stated, "Once we charge these lines we have to keep water moving all the time or it's going to freeze if it stands still. Usually when you move water, you saw the street department out here because I had some firefighters going down because you start creating ice out here."

Battalion chief Foy thinks the building was recently purchased at a tax sale.

At the height of the fire, workers at a downtown office building reported their building was on-fire, but investigators believe they just smelled the smoke from the 6th street fire.