A landlord was repeatedly warned about improperly installed smoke alarms before a house fire that killed a father and five children in Queensland in 2023, a coroner has heard. Deputy state coroner Donald MacKenzie held a pre-inquest conference into the Russell Island deaths on Tuesday. No witness recalled hearing the sound of an alarm during the blaze, the court was told. The owner was fined $774 for improper installation in 2024, the maximum possible penalty under Queensland law, but no conviction was recorded. The fire broke out in a two-story wooden Queenslander on August 6, 2023. The house had been moved to Russell Island and then renovated in 2013 before being rented privately. Five children—two brothers aged four and others aged three, 10, and 11—died in the fire. Their father, 34, died after running into the fire to rescue them. The children’s mother and father had fallen asleep in a converted “chill out” area underneath the house. The father awoke to see thick black smoke and immediately raced upstairs, where the children were sleeping. His partner tried to get into the house but was forced back by the fire. Another adult woman leapt off a balcony to safety and survived. The Queensland Fire Department does not have a station on Russell Island, and emergency vehicles must be ferried over in an emergency, a process that takes about 45–60 minutes, the court heard. As a result, it was a paramedic who first arrived at the scene, reaching the area within minutes, at about 6:26 a.m. The paramedic described the fire as so intense that he could feel the heat through his vehicle window and see flames coming from the roof and smoke in a mushroom formation. The children’s mother was kneeling on the ground in distress, and the paramedic asked if anyone else was inside. She replied that her five children were inside and that she had lost the ability to communicate. The paramedic was unable to enter the building due to the intensity of the blaze and focused instead on evacuating neighboring homes. Rural firefighters arrived at 6:35 a.m. The court heard the home had poor wiring, an exposed electrical box, and faulty power points known to short out. An extension cord ran from a poorly operating power point in a child’s bedroom, through a double adapter, to the understory area. The home’s smoke alarms had not been updated in compliance with 2017 laws that applied to any tenancy renewed after January 2022. These laws required additional safety measures for alarms. The homeowner claimed not to have been aware of the legislative change, the court was told. The mother of the children said she raised the issue of non-working smoke alarms with the owner, but nothing was done. No witness recalled hearing a smoke alarm sound at all before or during the fire. Coroner MacKenzie has been tasked with investigating seven issues, including whether legally installed fire alarms might have prevented the deaths and whether the emergency service response was adequate. The inquest will also consider whether additional emergency resources located on the island could have prevented the deaths. Fire investigators were unable to identify the cause of the blaze and could not rule out the possibility that it was lit deliberately. The inquest has been scheduled to sit for 10 days in November to hear from 16 witnesses.