Officials are still investigating the cause of a fire at 158 Burton St. just outside the city limits in the Flat Rock community early Tuesday morning.

When firefighters responded to the call at 12:37 a.m., the house was fully engulfed in flames and Surry County Fire Marshal Doug Jones estimated it had been burning for about an hour at that point.

It took members of the Four Way, Bannertown and Franklin volunteer fire departments about an hour to contain the blaze in the unoccupied rental house.

“The fire department did a good job. They stopped it where it was,” said Jones.

Though he praised their efforts, because the fire had been burning for so long, the house was lost. According to Jones, the back of the house burned to ash. The front is still standing, but the extensive damage will require it to be torn down.

“The walls fell out, the roof fell down, the rafters and joists burned away,” he said.

Carol Lester, who lives near the house in question, noticed the fire around 12:30 a.m. when she walked past her back door and saw an orange glow against the sky. She asked her mother to call 911, becoming the first to report the fire. She reported that she could feel the heat from the fire up to 500 feet away.

Officials are continuing to collect information and talk to people in the area to determine the cause of the blaze.