LAWRENCE - Jannette Ayala ran into the room where her children, 2-year-old Jeremiah and 1-year-old Naimam, were sleeping. She glanced out the window to the building next door. It was on fire.

She and her boyfriend, Luis Taveres, 29, had been awakened moments before by the landlord banging on the front door of their Springfield Street apartment. They lifted the children from their cribs, bundled them in thin, worn comforters, and hurried out the door.

"I didn't even get their shoes on," said Ayala, 19, who is four months pregnant and wore only socks and flip-flops as she sat on a bus heading to a shelter.

The couple had no idea where they and the children would end up and doubted much was left of their home.

"The fire started getting worse with the wind," Taveres said. "It started burning and burning and burning. They tried their best, you know," he said of the firefighters.

That same story was told over and over by dozens of the estimated 200 people evacuated from their homes during a fire that leveled a tightly packed city block of mostly triple-deckers.

People were awakened by firefighters or police officers or neighbors banging on front doors. In some cases, police had to knock down the doors to wake those inside.

Terry Crawley, 42, ran onto Parker Street clad only in a terry cloth bathrobe, matching navy blue socks and slippers.

His 52 Parker St. apartment was in one of the first buildings to which the flames spread.

"It was very scary," he said. "A big ball of fire. Like somebody had doused some gasoline on it and lit a match."

Crawley boarded a bus headed for a shelter and wrapped himself in a blanket. About 5:30 a.m., the bus brought him and dozens of other now homeless people in shifts to a temporary shelter set up at Cor Unum Meal Center, a half-mile away.

Shelters set up

By 7 a.m., the Red Cross had set up a permanent shelter at South Lawrence East School. And about 1 p.m., there were 54 people there, said Jamie Devlin, interim executive director of the Merrimack Valley Red Cross. Among them were eight people who lived in apartments run by the state Department of Mental Health, Jennifer Kritz, a spokeswoman for the department, said. She said they were safe, and the department is helping them find housing.

People had a hot meal, warm blankets and even clothes because two workers at Cor Unum - Rita Jensen and Sandra Sharpe - arrived at the soup kitchen for a typical day's work at 4:45 a.m. They looked out the large window toward Parker Street and saw the sky ablaze. They ran down to the fire and told Red Cross workers to start bringing people to the shelter. They'd cook for them.

"We couldn't just stand here," Sharpe said.

Some victims found shelter with family or friends.

Tara Mays and Mendessa Barthelmy went to 270 Market St. to help evacuate Barthelmy's sister Desiree, her husband, Robert, their two children, and the family dog. Mays is the family's niece. Both said they saw the fire from their homes, a few streets away.

Mays said when she got there, she saw people running out of their homes with no shoes on and jumping into their cars to get as far away from the fast moving fire as they could. She said her family tried to grab belongings as they left.

"It was already too late" to save anything, she said.

As they stood in the middle of Parker Street in the predawn hours, they watched as fire devoured the Market Street home.

Donations arrive for victims

The Red Cross was flooded yesterday with calls from people wanting to help out the victims. It planned to have its shelter set up through the night at South Lawrence East Elementary School, longer if needed.

Devlin said the Red Cross was steering all donations other than money to Lazarus House and the Salvation Army. He said the Red Cross is accepting financial donations to provide each family with a debit card to replace the items they need most.

"This is going to be a very expensive fire," he said, referring to the extensive damage and property lost in the blaze.

Laura Caron at Lazarus House said people had been coming by with carloads of items for the victims, including clothes, toiletries, sleeping bags and toys. She said she has heard from many people wanting to help.

Local businesses also have stepped up. New Balance Foundation donated $25,000 to the Red Cross yesterday and is planning to donate $10,000 worth of products, including shoes and clothing, to Lazarus House today to be distributed to the victims. The company is based in Brighton but has a manufacturing plant in Lawrence.

Sal's Pizza, Elaine's Pizza, Wendy's on Winthrop Avenue, BJ's in Ward Hill and Burtons Grill in North Andover all donated food to the Red Cross yesterday.

Staff writer Drake Lucas contributed to this report.