Police investigate after woman killed in Woolooga house fire | Video

The neighbour of a woman tragically killed in a house fire overnight in a small rural Qld town has opened up about the harrowing and horrific night, and her feeling of helplessness in the face of the inferno.

The neighbour of a woman killed in a house fire overnight in a small regional town has spoken of the horrific night, and her feeling of helplessness in the face of the inferno which at points reached 12m into the night sky.

The woman, in her 80s, died after her house at Booker St, Woolooga, went up in flames just before midnight on Thursday July 13.

Firefighters and paramedics arrived at the scene to find the house “well alight”, a QFES spokeswoman.

The house and street sit directly opposite the small town’s business centre and emergency crews battled the blaze for about four hours, finally extinguishing it about 3.45am.

Police said the woman’s remains were later found inside one of the front bedrooms.

She was the only occupant.

Police are investigating and will prepare a report for the coroner.

The gutted house has been declared a crime scene.

In response to questions as to whether the fire was being treated as suspicious Gympie Acting Senior Sergeant Patrick Good said “investigations are ongoing and at this stage we can’t speculate”.

‘METAL ON METAL SOUNDS’

Kathy Moore, whose home sits next door and less than 10m away, said her alarm was raised overnight when she heard “metal on metal sounds” while watching TV.

Police said the flames which gutted the Woolooga home reached more than 12m into the sky at points.

“I thought ‘that’s unusual’,” Ms Moore said.

She walked outside and was confronted by flames shooting from the roof of her neighbour’s house.

Ms Moore said called triple-0 and could the see the neighbour on the other side of the woman’s home trying to douse the flames with his garden hose.

“I did think I could put my hose on it as well, but it wouldn’t have done any good,” she said.

Instead she was forced to watch and wait as crews rushed to the small rural town about 35km northwest of Gympie.

Residents of Woolooga said the owners of the house (pictured here before the fire) kept to themselves and were rarely seen.

For her it felt like an eternity.

“Seconds and minutes feel like hours when you’re waiting … we’re half an hour to anywhere, so it’s obviously going to take them half an hour to get here,” she said.

“I was out here until about 1am.

‘SICK TO THE STOMACH’

“I felt sick at the thought somebody may well have been home.”

This fact was finally confirmed to her about 90 minutes later by first responders.

Kathy Moore, whose Woolooga home stands less than 10m from the building gutted by an overnight fire which claimed the life of a woman, said she felt “sick to her stomach” after hearing the news.

She was left feeling “sick to my stomach”.

“To think of somebody passing that way is just horrendous,” she said.

This was compounded by the reality of the situation given the blaze which had engulfed the single storey home.

“There was no way (her other neighbours) and myself could have gone in,” Ms Moors said.

“If we were 100 per cent sure (someone was there), there was just no way, because it was like a series of small explosions (inside).”

She believed the home’s owners had owned it for some time but were reclusive, likely for health reasons, and she herself had seen little of them in the two years since she had moved to the town.

She said paramedics and blue care services were regular visitors “to allow them to stay in the home”, and another member of the town believed the woman had only moved back into the home a few weeks ago.

“In the future I think I wouldn’t allow that (unfamiliarity) to happen again,” Ms Moore said.

“It’s a shock.”

Originally published as Police investigate after woman killed in Woolooga house fire | Video