BOARDMAN TWP., Ohio - A Boardman woman is grateful for smoke detectors that made it possible for her family to escape a fire in the middle of the night.

It was 2 a.m. Tuesday morning when the fire erupted in a more than century-old home on Tippecanoe Road.

It was a pleasant night, so Shannon Brown had the windows open in her second-floor bedroom.

 Smoke from the fire on the front porch came through the windows, setting off the smoke alarms and woke her up.

She rushed to get her four children and her mother out of the house as flames engulfed the enclosed front porch, where the nine-year-old son had been asleep. 

 Investigators say without the smoke alarms it could have been much more tragic. 

"If they hadn't had smoke alarms in here, I'm going to bet that we would have had at least one fatality if not more. The flames had already consumed the porch before our first truck even got on the scene," said Fire Investigator Jim McCreary.

There is extensive heat, smoke and water damage inside the home and the cause is still undetermined. 

 "We have the point of origin being outside the front porch, now we're going to work through and sift through all the things we can find there and see if we can put the puzzle together as to what may have started the fire," said McCreary. 

The home dates back to 1877 and was once a cattle farm.

A preliminary estimate on the loss is between $75,000 and $100,000.

Friends of the family have started a GoFundMe account to help Brown and her four school-age children.