A fire Tuesday afternoon that drew crews from Renton, Kent, Tukwila and Eastside Fire damaged a church in the Highlands.

Renton fire investigators were assessing damage and determining a cause Tuesday afternoon. No one was injured

The fire started at about 2:45 p.m. at the Community of Christ Church, 701 Monroe Ave. N.E., just north of Renton Technical College.

The building also houses the Highlands Preschool.

Joshua Hoffman was headed to a class at RTC, when he saw the smoke and flames billowing from the side of the church. He ran across Northeast Seventh Street from the college’s parking lot.

A workman was pulling his welding equipment out of the driveway and moving his van.

“When I arrived over there, the side of the roof was on fire. The bushes were on fire,” he said. “It looked like a heating component was on fire.”

He grabbed a neighbor’s hose. He estimates he fought the fire for about four minutes before fire crews arrived.

He was about eight feet from the flames. “It was really hot,” he said.

“I started hitting the side of the church, trying to get as much of it out before the fire department could get there,” he said.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t reach the roof, he said.

“I did as much as I could,” he said.

Fire Chief Mark Peterson said at the scene that some welding work was being done on the back side of the church. Juniper bushes caught fire and the flames extended to the roof.

Crews pulled walls and ceilings to ensure the fire didn’t spread into the building’s interior, he said. Outside, cedar shakes were pulled to check for any fire underneath.

Because it was a commercial structure, “we asked for additional resources so that we could get ahead of any sort of fire,” he said, especially ladder trucks because of the fire in the roof.