GUILDERLAND — In the early hours of Monday morning, a vacant commercial building, at 3400 Carman Road, burned to the ground.

It was the second fire in the Fort Hunter Fire District to completely destroy a building within the last month. On Sept. 3, a vacant home at 3494 East Lydius Street burned down.

The fire on Carman Road, according to Bill Fleming, the assistant chief of the Fort Hunter Fire Department, was called in by a passerby around 1:30 a.m. on Monday morning.

By the time department members arrived, he said, the fire was “90-percent involved” and had to be fought in “defensive mode,” meaning attacking it from a safe distance, and trying to prevent it from spreading to other neighborhood buildings.

A house next door, however, lost its garage, containing a new car, and sustained some damage to its exterior.

“Our biggest goal was to save the house and minimize the damage to it,” Fleming said. “We also had a safety goal, and there were no injuries.”

The vacant building is shown on the town’s 2013 final assessment roll as belonging to Anthony Serafini, who could not be reached for comment; it was valued at $145,543.

Firefighters were still on the scene Tuesday morning, said Fleming, as were fire investigators from Guilderland.

Lieutenant Daniel McNally, a member of the Guilderland Police Department, handling the investigation, did not return calls for comment.