Neighbours tell of rescuing siblings from burning home at Oxley which killed their mother An off-duty firefighter says he used a sledgehammer to help save two children from a burning Brisbane home. BRAVE neighbours have described how they used a cricket bat to smash their way into a burning house as a young boy and his sister desperately screamed for help and beat helplessly at doors and windows. Thanh Ngoc Thi Pham Source: News Limited Aruna Siriwardene told The Courier-Mail he was enjoying a quiet Christmas Day with his family shortly after 5pm when his son Pasan, 16, noticed smoke coming from the property directly behind their home at Oxley. Inside, an eight-year-old boy was trapped in the upstairs bathroom, slowly losing consciousness as thick smoke overwhelmed him, while his sister, 15, ran through the flames and pulled at the locked backdoor in a frantic bid to escape. The blaze, which claimed the life of the children's mother Thanh Ngoc Thi Pham, is being treated as suspicious by police. "I heard someone yelling so I jumped over the fence and saw a girl trapped inside yelling for help," Mr Siriwardene said. I tried to kick the door in, but I couldn't so I grabbed a metal chair from the back veranda and tried to use it to smash the glass, but the chair just bent. My wife passed my son a cricket bat - we used it to smash the glass and get her out. Aruna Siriwardene and son Pasan helped in the rescue. Mr Siriwardene said the badly-burned girl was screaming that her younger brother was still inside. "We had to stop (her) from going back inside," he said. She kept screaming 'where is my brother, where is my brother?' The young boy was still on the second-storey, trapped in the bathroom. Durack firefighter Mark Dutton was driving home from a 10-hour shift when he saw smoke billowing from the house. Instincts learned from more than 26 years in the service kicked in. Police and fire investigators photograph the scene of the fatal house fire. Calling for an extension ladder from a neighbour, Mr Dutton - a father of two - climbed to the smoke-filled bathroom. "I could not see any flames and I could not see the people, all I could see was a lot of darkness and smoke," he said. All I heard was help us, 'we can't breathe, we're trapped, we can't get out'. "Initially I could hear them but as the time went by there was less and less vocal response ... they were in serious stress," he said. Firefighter Mark Dutton said the emotion of the event sunk in after. Picture: Richard Walker Source: News Limited Grabbing a sledge hammer from one of the arriving crews, Mr Dutton smashed his way through the bathroom as smoke billowed. Firefighters helped pull the boy out of the inferno. His sister had run downstairs to the door where the neighbours saved her. It took half an hour for the horror of what had happened to hit the seasoned firefighter. At the time, no, I wasn't thinking about anything else but the two kids ... but after it was emotional, relieved that the people got out. He said it was difficult to comprehend the suggestion of arson. He said he hoped he would be able to eventually meet the children he helped save. "It doesn't get much worse than that, it's something that's going to remain with the family for the rest of their lives - I tried my best," he said. The siblings were on Thursday night in a serious but stable condition. Speaking about the investigation into the cause of the fire, Queensland Police Inspector Sean Cryer said officers were not seeking anyone who was not in the house at the time but said it was being treated as suspicious. There are some indications it may have been deliberately lit and our investigations are continuing in that regard. "We're looking inside and outside the dwelling as much as we possibly can and taking samples for accelerants," he said. Inspector Cryer said the Criminal Investigation Branch was investigating the family's movements earlier on in the day.