A fire that tore through a building in Melbourne’s northern suburbs is being treated as suspicious after it took nearly three hours to bring the blaze under control and nearby residents were forced to evacuate, police said.
Sixty firefighters responded to the blaze on High Street in Preston, which broke out in a vacant former furniture shop near the corner of Bell Street just after 3am on Saturday.
A former vacant furniture store has been engulfed in flames overnight. Credit: Chris Vedelago
After receiving a series of triple zero calls, firefighters arrived within four minutes to find the large single-storey building ablaze, according to a Fire Rescue Victoria spokesman.
About 50 residents of an adjacent apartment complex were evacuated because of the threat posed by the fire, the spokesman said.
No one was injured, but smoke clouded the streets more than 150 meters away from the fire.
The police are treating it as suspicious. An arsonist was due to go to the scene on Saturday afternoon.
It seems that the fire destroyed the premises, which had been renovated at the time.
The fire was brought under control shortly before 6 a.m., but crews remained on the scene for several hours to make sure the fire was extinguished.