The NSW Fire and Rescue Service wants people to dob in hoarders after an elderly Sydney couple was injured in a fire fuelled by piles of junk.
Their Marrickville home was destroyed by the blaze which broke out when some of their hoarded items were ignited by a candle on Sunday night, NSWFRS Superintendent Tom Cooper said.
To get into the house, firefighters had to scale a pile of hoarded goods in the couple's front yard with a ladder.
Crews then worked through the night to contain the flames, which kept flaring up in the stacks of rubbish inside the home.
"The people's belongings were stacked up to the roof, they even had belongings stacked inside the roof," Supt Cooper said.
The man and woman were found near the front of the house by emergency services.
The woman's clothes were on fire and she suffered serious burns to 20 per cent of her body, Supt Cooper said.
Both were taken to hospital, where the woman remains in a serious condition.
Neighbouring houses were also evacuated.
Items from clothes to fishing roads, body boards and scrap metal had been packed throughout the couple's house and in their front yard.
They had also filled a van, a small four wheel drive and a trailer with goods that couldn't fit in their home.
Hoarding posed a great risk to the safety of those in the home, Supt Cooper said.
Neighbour Hayden Reed said he was concerned for the couple when he saw the size of the fire.
"It was straight through the roof, it started catching to building to the right of it and then right to the back on the house," he said.
Chris Burgess, who runs the rubbish removal company Hoarder Cleanup, says there are a lot of hoarders all around Sydney.
"You'll get people who just store newspapers, some people who store bottles, other people just have every food wrapper they've ever had in 20 or 30 years in there," he told Fairfax Radio.
He said the worst case of hoarding he had ever seen involved two houses and 100 truckloads of rubbish.
He said his company was most often called by relatives of hoarders.
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