Two people were found dead after a fire ripped through their home in Makiki early Thursday afternoon.

Ten Honolulu Fire Department units staffed with 39 firefighters responded to the blaze at 954 Spencer St. at 12:49 p.m. When they arrived four minutes later, the two-story residence was already engulfed in flames, said HFD Capt. Malcolm Medrano.

Crews battled the fire from Spencer and Prospect streets and brought the blaze under control at 1:04 p.m. It was extinguished at 1:40 p.m.

Firefighters found a man dead just outside the home under the building’s exterior staircase, and a woman was found dead in a bedroom on the ground floor, Medrano said. Both are believed to have been in their 60s or 70s, authorities said.

Their names were not released pending positive identification by the Honolulu Medical Examiner.

Mikhail Debellis, 20, lives in a building just a few feet from the burned-out residence and came within feet of the flames as he evacuated his apartment.

“I had my headphones in, so I pretty much couldn’t hear anything,” he said. “I started to smell smoke … and my fire alarm went off.”

Debellis said he left his bedroom and saw and smelled smoke inside the living room of the two-bedroom apartment he shares with his mother, who was at work at the time, and their 16-year-old Yorkie-poodle mix, Lucy. Debellis grabbed the dog and headed for the front door, which faces the front door of the residence that burned just a few feet away.

“I walked out the front door to see what was going on. All I saw was a giant ball of fire, maybe like 3 feet from me,” he said. “After that I just took my dog, took my phone.”

Both residences are owned by the same person, according to Debellis.

He waited outside on Spencer Street for about four hours while HFD, Honolulu Police Department and Honolulu Emergency Medical Services personnel were at the fire scene.

Debellis and his mother moved to their apartment about six months ago and were not particularly familiar with the couple who were found dead, but he said they seemed friendly.

“They were nice people. They always said hi and everything,” Debellis said.

He did note that the couple appeared to be hoarding cardboard. He said he could see stacks of cardboard through the windows of their apartment and in their car and even outside.

“Once every week we would see them drive up with their car full of cardboard boxes. They would bring them up and bring them inside,” he said. “There was even a lot on their porch because they couldn’t fit all of it inside.”

He also said they were regular smokers. “It was possibly a cigarette (that started the fire) because they do smoke quite often,” Debellis said.

The American Red Cross was notified to assist a woman who lived on the second floor of the home that burned. She was not at the house at the time of the fire, Medrano said.

An HFD fire investigator also was dispatched to the scene to determine the fire’s cause and origin and to provide damage estimates. To assist with the investigation, HFD deployed a drone to survey the extent of the fire, he said.