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A house caught fire in Aspen Hill Thursday and the chain-link fence surrounding it became electrified after a tree branch fused together wires running next to the structure, county Fire and Rescue Service officials said.

There were no injuries.

Firefighters were called to a house in the 13000 block of Grenoble Drive around 1:30 p.m., Pete Piringer, spokesman for the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service, said.

They found smoke pouring out of the single-story, rambler-style house and that the fence surrounding the property had become electrified.

The storm caused the branches of a tree next to the house to sway, pulling the electrical lines together and short-circuiting the electrical panel in the house's basement to cause the fire, Piringer said. The wires then fell onto the metal fence, he said.

Firefighters had to wait for Pepco workers to turn off power to the house before they could begin to extinguish the fire, Piringer said. It took firefighters just 15 minutes to extinguish the small blaze, he said.

By that time, the fire had spread from the basement to the roof, he said.

"It wasn't all that challenging, but it was a little unusual and dangerous with the ground being wet," Piringer said.

The two occupants of the house escaped without injury, he said, but they will be displaced because the structure is uninhabitable.

The dollar amount of damage to the house had not been determined yet, but Piringer estimated it to be in the "tens of thousands."