These girls should still be alive, I thought as I listened to the 911 call containing some of the last conscious moments of three International Business College students who died after a Jan. 23 fire in their Aboite Township apartment.

But is that simply an unfounded emotional response to hearing three college students calmly alerting authorities to a blaze they were ultimately unable to escape? Or does the public record - the small part that has been released - invite legitimate speculation that a series of avoidable events conspired to doom Renea Patton, Lara Punches and Jennifer Spurgeon?

Their families - and the public - deserve to know.

One need not question the performance of the Fort Wayne Fire Department to scrutinize the speed of the response to Patton's call. As the 911 recording released by the Allen County Sheriff's Department makes clear, potentially precious seconds were lost because Patton's cell-phone call was initially received by a county dispatcher, who after taking some preliminary information realized the 5163 Coventry Parkway address was within Fort Wayne and transferred the call to the city's emergency communications department about 17 seconds later, at which point some of the information had to be repeated.

Fort Wayne Fire Chief Pete Kelly and others doubt the jurisdictional delay contributed to the fire's tragic outcome and, as Sheriff Ken Fries noted, it's likely the city received other calls alerting it to the fire. But Kelly also said the city-county handoff may have added a minute to his department's response time - “and every second counts,” Deputy Chief for Human Resources Amy Briggs said.

Because the city has not yet released its 911 records of the fire, I can't tell you what was said between the three victims and the dispatcher after the county transferred the call. But the county's recording offers a chilling glimpse at the beginning of a tragedy that within minutes rendered the young women unconscious.

Patton told the dispatcher that she lived in an apartment and that there was a fire in the stairwell. The county dispatcher advised Patton to stay on the line and transferred the call.

“We woke up to smoke,” Patton said, while voices in the background - presumably Punches and Spurgeon - coughed and shouted, “Shut the door! Shut the door!” As it turned out, the frantic advice induced a fatal mistake. The three girls had sought refuge in a windowless second-floor bathroom - giving them no way out and firefighters no easy way in.

According to Briggs and city records, Fort Wayne's dispatch took the county's call around 5:05 a.m. and had units on the way by 5:08. Firefighters began arriving around 5:12 and had removed the unconscious women through a window by 5:26.

Some have questioned why a rescue unit from the downtown station was assigned to enter the apartment and remove the women when other units were already present. But Kelly and Briggs said firefighters could not enter the building without first securing a water source and securing the scene. Rescuers entered the building as soon as conditions allowed, they said - and by then, according to reports, the structure was so weak that a firefighter's knee went through the “spongy” floor.

“The crew placed their own safety secondary to the rescue of the victims. They are to be commended,” read a post-fire report by Capt. R. Godsey.

I don't doubt that. Even so, several nagging questions linger.

Would it have made a difference had the Aboite Volunteer Fire Department been called to assist? Kelly thinks not, since its station adjacent to the apartments is usually unmanned and probably could not have responded more quickly than the city did.

But Fries said he raised concerns about snubbing the Aboite department after earlier fires in the apartment complex. “I said, ‘Somebody's going to die.'”

County Building Commissioner Dave Fuller and others have also expressed concerns about the lack of fire-suppression features in the apartments, including insulation in the stairwells and firewalls in the spaces between the floors. Did the apartments' construction allow the flames to spread especially quickly?

Several firefighters also reported that they did not hear the apartments' fire alarms at the scene. Briggs said the department has not yet determined whether the alarms were working that morning.

And although no one wants to criticize the victims, who were no doubt incredibly frightened and disoriented, it must be pointed out that they chose possibly the worst place to seek shelter. Briggs said city dispatchers had urged the women to leave the bathroom, without success. “I can't remember a more gut-wrenching case,” she added.

“I wasn't there, but I'm confident we did everything we could (to save the women),” Kelly said.

All the more reason for the city to release the rest of its records as soon as possible so lawyers for all sides can sort things out - and for the city and county to combine their emergency communications operations with equal diligence.

Even if a few extra seconds wouldn't have mattered in this case, there will be a next time.