The enclave where the squatters lived. Credit:Justin McManus The blaze was so intense, police have not yet been able to identify the three victims, with forensic testing under way. Earlier on Thursday, Senior Sergeant Brad Nichols said the fire was deemed suspicious, after a fuel can was found outside the factory in a gutter. Neighbour Adi Mangidi said he heard screaming about 11.30pm. He saw his neighbours run out with buckets of water to douse the flames, but the fire was too large, he said.

A fuel container at the scene. Credit:Justin McManus "I didn't know people were inside. I thought they screamed and ran away," he said. "It's very horrible." Locals said the squatters moved in around mid-2016. A man known as "Bluey" lived with his girlfriend and another man in a small corrugated iron room which had formerly been used for storage, they said. Police investigate the fire that killed three people. Credit:Justin McManus One local, Tim O'Grady, said he suspected the group moved into the factory after a white Holden ute, which the couple had been living in and was parked further west along Kinnear Street, was impounded.

The trio regularly locked themselves inside at night for security. Tributes placed at the scene of the fire. Credit:Daniel Pockett Lately, they had been leaving the doors open because of the warmer weather, but police were unable to say whether they had been locked inside when fire broke out. A local said he regularly exchanged greetings with one of the men, who looked to be in his 30s or 40s, and was a "really gentle, calm, relaxed person". The abandoned Kinnear warehouse in Footscray, where three people died on Wednesday night. Credit:Justin McManus

"He didn't bother anyone, he's just a lovely guy," he said. The local said the man previously had his white car packed with his belongings parked nearby. The back of the factory, where the fire broke out. Credit:Justin McManus The room too had been crammed with meagre belongings. Another resident said the squatters had been "trying to make a go of it", with clothes hanging up, succulents in pots out the front and a mat at the door. They were also regular customers at a milk bar around the corner, with one of the men and the woman visiting every morning to get money out from the ATM and to make a phone call.

The Kinnears Rope Works factory on Ballarat Road closed in 2002 and had been slated for redevelopment into an apartment complex. Several parts had been leased-out over the years, however VCAT had recently approved a plan from China-based company R&F Properties to develop the block. Parts of the block were heritage listed. R&F Properties took over the site about six months ago, around the same time it was ordered to secure the property by the local council. "R&F has had 24-hour security on the site. The company had received preliminary advice that there had been no squatters in the main buildings on the site, but a small outbuilding had been forced open from the street," the company said in a statement. City of Maribyrnong mayor Catherine Cumming confirmed residents complained to council six months ago about the squatters, and officers had located a man and had tried to connect him with services.

It's understood the company had put their own locks on the doors, but the squatters had broken the locks and put their own back on. Across the road from the factory is a site where the Harris family plans to build portable homes for disadvantaged people on vacant VicRoads properties in a unique project to tackle the city's homelessness crisis. The family's plan is to build 57 studio-sized units on nine disused housing blocks. Footscray youth worker Les Twentyman described the deaths as a tragedy and called for more housing to be available for the homeless. "This is what happens when people live in such appalling circumstances," he said.