Have you ever been inside a burning house? It doesn’t say here if it was fully involved, although their inability to escape would indicate that. It also doesn’t say if rescue attempts would have involved entering the building, but from the outcome it doesn’t sound like all they needed was someone to hand children out the window to.

Inside of a burning structure black smoke rises and makes it as dark as night and impossible to see. Firefighters just look for a red glow and attack that. They get as low as possible to see even that much. It’s not like Hollywood where you can walk around upright in the glare of the fire and see where you are.

The bystanders would have been in a residence they were probably unfamiliar with even had the lights been on, but now it is pitch dark. Trust me it is, you literally can’t see your hand in front of your face. You trip over furniture, and everything else because you can’t see.

Superheated air makes it impossible to breath without an air pack, and if you tried it would fry your lungs. If that didn’t get you smoke inhalation and toxic gases would.

Again there’s not much information about the scope of the fire, but I doubt that it was an intact structure with some smoke curling out the window. How many of those willing to enter would have had to die before this story would have been attacked from the other angle of why did the police allow anyone to enter? Obviously to the bystander it seems heartless and even gutless, but it sounds like the cops did the right thing.

I also suspect these policemen went home haunted by the sounds of those screams and wishing they could have done more. But the reality is neither they nor the people outside were trained or equipped to successfully rescue those inside.

Also it doesn’t give response times of the fire service. Were the sirens that the witnesses alluded to the sounds of the fire trucks responding? If the PD is already on the scene, that should mean the FD is en route, and should only be a few minutes out. To the bystander listening to screams for help that seems like an eternity but in most cases it is a very short time.

Obviously what happened was a tragedy that costs several family members their lives. What very easily also could have happened would be an even greater tragedy where bystanders attempting rescues were killed as well, and that’s what the police were trained to prevent. They weren’t trained to rescue people from a burning building because without appropriate equipment to protect the rescuer the reality is there is not much anyone can do. So it was an unfortunate tragedy but the outcome could have been worse.