Neighbours have reported smelling fuel and hearing a woman’s cries for help as an explosion and fire tore through a Brisbane home, killing three people.

The Everton Hills home was engulfed early on Tuesday morning, sparking a dramatic rescue attempt by two men. But the ferocity of the blaze – which sent flames four storeys into the air – beat the men back.

Firefighters took almost an hour to get the fire under control. When they searched the two-storey brick property they found the bodies of two women and a man.

Police are trying to establish if a woman and her adult son who lived at the house are among the dead.

The house was declared a crime scene.

Aerial vision of the Everton Hills home where three people died when a fire broke out.https://t.co/5niVXIYTnW pic.twitter.com/pbDJFLiklq — ABC Brisbane (@abcbrisbane) April 17, 2018

“There are suspicious circumstances around this fire,” the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services Superintendent Bevan Moore has told the Courier-Mail.

“Calls from neighbours have indicated there were unusual noises associated with the fire ... there were explosions reported by neighbours, the smell of fuel, things like that.”

Investigators don’t yet know if the explosion sparked the fire, or if it was the other way around.

That will be a key question for forensic crews tasked with finding out exactly what happened at the Pavonia Street property about 5.30am.

Neighbour Luke Demner and another man desperately tried to get into the burning house to save the occupants.

Emergency services at the scene of the house fire. Photograph: Glenn Hunt/AAP

“There were flames meeting me at the door,” Demner told the Courier-Mail.



“We tried kicking in the front door but no luck, so we went around the back. The glass door was already open but we called out and didn’t hear anything back.”

Another neighbour, Rowena Ostrofski, heard a loud sound, like something heavy being dropped on the ground and a woman screaming for help.

“I hear glass breaking so I went to the kitchen and check it,” Ostrofski told Fairfax media.

“Then I hear a woman’s voice saying ‘help, help’ and then I look at the bigger window and I saw the smoke on the roof.”

Police Inspector Daniel Bragg said neighbours had reported hearing “a loud explosion, quite significant” and seeing flames that were visible from some distance away.

“We’re investigating it as a suspect house fire until evidence comes to light that shows us otherwise,” he told reporters. “We’re trying to put together the pieces of this jigsaw, what started this fire. We need to find out if it’s suspicious, I mean, it might have been just a terrible accident.”

Bragg said it was extraordinary that no neighbouring properties were damaged, given the size and intensity of the fire.

“This is just an awful thing for the whole community,” he said.

