A body has been found inside a fire-ravaged Ipswich home, with police treating the fire as amid reports of a petrol smell in the area.
The two-storey house on Verran St at Bellbird Park was reported to be on fire about 5pm on Thursday.
The fire took several hours to extinguish but was so intense investigators were unable to enter the building until Friday morning, once the structure was declared safe by fire authorities.
Queensland Police Assistant Commissioner Matthew Vanderbyl said police are trying to identify the person who was found dead inside.
“We have detectives in place, from the Ipswich criminal investigation branch and others, undertaking fairly intensive enquiries as to identifying that individual and the remains, and also as to the full circumstances of... The occupancy of the house,” he said.
Vandervbyl also believes the fire is suspicious.
“There were reports of a smell of petrol around the area at that time, so I can tell you that we are very much treating that as a suspicious fire,” Vanderbyl said.
The property had been cordoned off overnight while investigators waited for conditions to improve.
“The fire was extinguished over the next course of hours, we’ve guarded that overnight until such times we can get in and search for persons inside the house,” he said.
Police believe the property had been vacated weeks before the fire.
“We understood that no one was meant to be living in the house at that time,” Vanderbyl said.
“Whether or not people had been evicted or had re-located or the house was just unoccupied, I don’t know.”
Detectives are now working to trace anyone who may have had links to the address.
“As part of that we go back to try to locate anybody who’s had anything to do with that residence... And we’re actually doing that now,” he said.
Authorities initially believed everyone at the scene had been accounted for, with one man in his 30s treated for smoke inhalation.
Police said he is not believed to be connected to the property.
Vanderbyl said the scale of the damage meant crews could not safely search the house on Thursday.
“The entire top storey of that two-storey house had collapsed onto the remainder of the house, rendering it quite unsafe to get into,” he said.
“It would have been too hot to get into yesterday afternoon.”
The remains were discovered on the upper level of the collapsed structure during Friday’s search.
Anyone with information is urged to contact police.