A fire outside a seventh-floor window Saturday night forced the evacuation of Vicksburg’s tallest building.

No injuries were reported.

The Vicksburg Apartments, 801 Clay St., was evacuated by Vicksburg police and fire departments just after the blaze was reported at about 8:15.

“The police were already here and had started getting people out when we got here,” said Lt. Tim Andress of the Vicksburg Fire Department.

Capt. Daryl Carson, the battalion chief at the scene, said firefighters knocked on all doors to evacuate the 11-story apartment building that formerly was The Hotel Vicksburg.

He said evacuees included two handicapped residents who were helped by firefighters.

Andress said the fire was extinguished in minutes by firefighters carrying pump guns, or water in backpacks.

“I was sitting in my living room when I heard the tapping and cracking,” said Pearl Proctor, who saw flames outside her seventh-floor window. “We could see it through the blinds.”

Proctor, who has lived in the building for about a year, said the window where she saw flames is sealed shut, so she felt like the source of the blaze was outside.

No ledges or wires are near her two-bedroom home, which is on the southwest corner of the building.

Carson said no cause of the fire had been determined.

Andress, who said he saw the flames on the side of the building, said someone blamed the flames on fireworks, but that could not be confirmed.

Standing among the evacuees across Clay Street from the building were a woman and two 6-year-old girls dressed for bed in footed pajamas.

“They’ll sleep well tonight,” Lisa Gould said of her daughter, Rowan, and Rowan’s overnight guest, Aimee Townsend.

Resident manager Dayna Haney said the building has 54 apartments, 40 of which are rented. The building is owned by George Mayer of northern Georgia and formerly of Vicksburg and John Coats of Slidell, La.

No information was available on the number of people evacuated.

The Vicksburg was built in 1928 on the site of the First Presbyterian Church, which had been destroyed by fire 20 years earlier.

Boasting luxuries of the day such as ceiling fans, iced water, a telegraph office and taxi call stand, the 58-room hotel opened on July 4, 1929.

The hotel operated until 1975, and reopened in 1979 as an apartment complex.

Many of the former hotel rooms have been converted into one- and two-bedroom suites.