The mother of three young children fighting for their lives in hospital after a fire broke out in their Sydenham home is yet to be formally interviewed by detectives because she is too distraught.
About 30 firefighters raced to Fergus Ct in Melbourne’s northwest after the blaze broke out at the back of their home about 9.30pm on Sunday.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Investigation begins into horror house fire.
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Arson Squad detectives are leading the investigation and trying to work out how it started and if the children — a one-year-old girl, a three-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl — were left home alone.
Police have not been able to ask their 25-year-old mother where she was when the fire started because she has been so distressed.
7NEWS understands she is cooperating with authorities and her priority is to be by her children’s bedside, desperately waiting for their condition to improve.
Neighbours heard their screams and raised the alarm, with a loud bang rippling across the suburb at the same time the blaze broke out.
“It was like an explosion. At first, we thought it was gunshots, so we cowered a bit, and then I peaked out the back window and saw the flames and the smoke coming out the back of their house,” one witness said.
Jayde Petalas’s toddler son Kalais was among the three children rushed to the Royal Children’s Hospital in a critical condition, along with his two step-siblings. The five-year-old girl suffered the worst smoke inhalation.
Hospital staff are preparing Petalas, who is estranged from the mother of the little boy, for the worst.
“They’re not well at all,” he said.
Petalas, 27, described the children as “happy little kids”.
The children and their mother had only just moved into the home.
Investigators say it could take another day or two to work out how the blaze started but are currently treating it as a tragic accident.
Detective Acting Inspector Adam Henry said: “at this stage, it’s too early to say whether the fire is suspicious or not and it’s important that we don’t pre-empt any possible outcomes or make any assumptions.”