Neighbours have revealed the horrific toll and heroic actions by neighbours during a house fire that killed a mother and her young daughter.
A total of ten people were inside a property at Heckenberg in Sydney's southwest when the fire broke out shortly after midnight on Wednesday, gutting the family home.
Most had already escaped by the time firefighters arrived, but the bodies of 46-year-old Veronica Carmady and her six-year-old daughter Aurora were recovered from inside.
Among the eight people who escaped the blaze were four children, with one girl and one man fighting for their lives in hospital.
A few doors down from the charred home, disability support worker Daniel Bates saw a toddler being hurriedly carried out of the blaze by a woman.
"I saw the house engulfed (in the fire), came out ... and I saw the lady carrying the child across the road and she was just standing there in a state of shock and panic, like looking for somebody," he told AAP.
"The child was mostly covered in soot. That house was fully on fire in about 60 seconds."
Visibly distraught family members were at the scene with investigators during the day, while some people stopped to leave flowers in tribute to the victims.
Across the street, one resident said she was woken by loud screams of people calling for help.
"We thought it was a fight, like heaps of people arguing around 12.30am and then we went outside on the porch and saw the fire was going straight up," she said.
She said her next-door neighbour forced entry to the burning house and tried to help some of those inside escape.
"I spoke to his worried wife and told her 'good on him for going inside' ... then he came out and sat all panicked saying, 'oh my God, oh my God' and I tried to calm him down."
Fire and Rescue NSW Commissioner Jeremy Fewtrell said he could not speak highly enough of the actions of neighbours, who reportedly freed at least one child from the blaze.
“It goes to show you the tremendous people we have in our society, people that are members of the community, that just put themselves at risk to help people in the greatest time of need, that would take tremendous courage,” he said.
Authorities were at the fire within minutes of receiving an emergency call, but the scale of the blaze meant their best efforts could not save those who died.
A two-year-old girl was taken to Westmead Children’s Hospital and remains in a critical condition, while a 50-year-old man was taken to Concord Hospital also in a critical condition.
A 14-year-old girl was also taken to Liverpool Hospital.
Investigators were yet to determine if the public housing property had a working smoke alarm.
A Homes NSW spokeswoman said the agency was helping police with their investigation, but they did not immediately respond to questions on the status of alarms in the property.
Mr Bates said the multicultural area, made up mostly of Pasifika and Arabic-speaking families, had its fair share of tragedies in recent years from house fires to fatal car accidents.
He said large families often moved into sub-par houses due to skyrocketing Sydney rents.
"The houses aren't even in great condition ... a lot of them are dilapidated, in a bad state of repair, easily flammable and all built of timber."
The latest deadly blaze follows a fatal fire at Guildford in Sydney's west on Tuesday.
That fire was believed to be caused by an e-bike battery, while no working smoke alarm was found in the property.
