Christmas Day ended on an unhappy note for a Union couple when fire gutted their home.

Larry Robinson, fire commander for the Union Public Safety Department, said firefighters were dispatched to 114 Carson St. around 9:30 p.m. Friday. Robinson said that when they arrived they saw flames coming out of the right side window from what they later learned was the living room area of the building. Union firefighters along with those from Monarch and Southside would remain on the scene for three hours extinguishing the blaze.

Robinson said the cause of the fire is unknown at this time but it caused no injuries. He said that Mack Lipsey, one of the house’s two occupants, was at home when the fire started. Lipsey told firefighters that he’d been asleep in the living room and woke up to find the room on fire. He said he ran out of the building.

The blzes caused “lots of heavy fire damage” to the building Robinson said, leaving it uninhabitable. He said the building, which is owned by a woman in Columbus, Ohio named Barbara Page, could possibly be made habitable again but only with a great deal of repair.

Robinson said the couple are currently staying with relatives. He said he contacted the Piedmont Chapter of the American Red Cross on the couple’s behalf and gave them the organizations’s phone number.