A fire at a Robbinsdale senior living facility early Tuesday morning has left a woman dead.

A 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew arrived at the scene just before 7 a.m. Tuesday and saw a large police presence involving Robbinsdale squads, who blocked traffic for multiple street blocks in the area of West Broadway and 39th Avenue North. Police say that area is expected to be closed off throughout the morning so firefighters can make sure there aren’t any flareups or hotspots.

Officials say crews were called to the 4300 block of Robbins Landing, the address for the seven-story Robbins Landing Apartments building, at 5:18 a.m. for a fire. Police tried to enter a third-floor unit but weren’t able to get inside due to the heavy amount of smoke.

Firefighters then got to the unit, where they pulled a woman out and brought her to paramedics, who gave her emergency aid. However, Robbinsdale Police Capt. John Elder says she later died from her injuries. An investigation is being done to confirm her identity and to locate her family members.

“There’s no good time to have this happen, but especially as people come into the holidays, there’s going to be somebody’s grandmother, somebody’s mother, isn’t going to be sitting with them during the holidays. It really drives that home more,” said Elder.

Members of the fire department were ventilating the building around 7:30 a.m. due to what Elder says was “an incredible amount of smoke.” He says it’s unknown at this time if the smoke was caused by smoldering, if there were a lot of combustibles that had ignited during the fire, or something else, adding it as total darkness, even with flashlights.

“It was like a black wall of smoke,” said Elder on the officers who opened the door to the third-floor unit. “They called in- they don’t carry air packs, are standing in a very dangerous environment – for anyone who could crawl or get to them and then closed the door.”

All residents in the building have been evacuated, which Elder said was a challenge due to their ages and mobility issues. The building is for those who are senior citizens who are at least 62 years old or are disabled.

Residents were brought to Metro Transit buses to keep warm and are expected to be able to return to their units within the next few hours, however, Elder added they are working with the Red Cross to make sure everyone has a place to stay due to lots of water damage on the second floor.

It is unknown at this time what caused the fire, however, a man who lives on the building’s third floor told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS flames broke out on his floor.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.