At some point, Morgan's wife arrived, followed by Morgan a few minutes later, said Pasco Fire Rescue Assistant Chief Mike Ciccarello.
Sounds like the fire had been going for some time and there was no way that they would have known there were animals inside as the owners showed up AFTER the fire department.
And before the dept gets shredded for *taking so long*, there's places in our parts that it would easily take that long for the firefighters to reach from the time they got the call, to the time they got to the station, drove to the scene, and managed to get water going.
Rural fire departments have further distances to cover and therefor have longer response times (12 minutes is pretty good), they are poorly equipped, poorly trained and are usually all volunteers. Considering all that, they do a good job when they can. Also since nobody was home the call most likely came after the fire was well started. The reason I said they sounded like a typical rural fire department is that’s what they sound like, doing the best they can with what they got. Sometimes the best they can do is to keep the fire from spreading.