An inquest into the death of a young boy in an Alice Springs house fire has heard electrical cabling in much of the Northern Territory's social housing had not been replaced since the 1990s.

Three-year-old Mitchell Thomas was unable to be revived after suffering smoke inhalation from a fire that started in the roof of a property in Larapinta in June 2023.

The inquest in the Alice Springs Local Court this week heard he had been sleeping in the apartment in a public housing complex when the fire broke out, with initial investigations identifying the cause of the blaze as an electrical fault.

Independent fire inspector Simon Cox told the court the fire was caused by a faulty mains cable and said most of the NT’s social housing stock was built in the 1980s, with some cabling not replaced fo

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