Tacoma, Wash. ? Emergency call logs show that nearly eight minutes elapsed between when a social worker called 911 to report that Josh Powell’s children were in danger and when sheriff’s deputies were dispatched. By the time officers were on their way, the home was exploding in a gas-fueled inferno, with Powell and his two young boys inside.

The priority of the dispatch Sunday was “routine” instead of “emergency,” which cost several minutes of response time, and when the deputies arrived 14 minutes later, there was nothing they could do.

The Associated Press obtained the logs Wednesday night under a public records request.

Recently released audio recordings of the 911 calls raised questions about how the dispatch center handled the social worker’s call regarding Powell, who was a person of interest in the disappearance of his wife two years ago.

The worker detailed how Powell had locked her out of his house during what was supposed to be a supervised visit with his sons, and that she could smell gas.

Minutes later, Powell torched the home, killing himself and the boys.

The recordings showed that the man who took the 911 call engaged in nearly seven minutes of questioning that ended with him saying he didn’t know how long it would be before deputies could respond.

“I see two problems: The delay in the dispatch, and they dispatch it as a routine call,” Pierce County Sheriff’s Detective Ed Troyer said Wednesday night. “Had our guy been going priority, and had they dispatched it in the first three minutes, we probably could have shaved 10 minutes off our response — but there’s no way we get there in time.”

The logs show that the social worker called 911 from her cellphone at 12:08 p.m. Sunday, but it took her until two minutes into the call to find the address of the house. Three minutes after that, the man who took her call transferred the information to a dispatcher, who alerted two deputies about 2 1/2 minutes later, at 12:16.

But at precisely that time, calls began pouring in to report explosions at the house — apparently from the fire blowing out windows.

The first deputy arrived at 12:30 to find the home engulfed in flames.

Troyer said the sheriff’s office was disappointed that the initial call-taker left the impression that help wasn’t immediately on the way.

“Are we unhappy with the etiquette and the manner? Yes,” Troyer said. He said he hoped the call center will review the matter so the same mistakes don’t happen again.

Transcripts of the 911 call also show it took more than three minutes for the operator to understand that the social worker was there to supervise a child custody visit — factors that contributed to the dispatch delay.

Near the end of the call, she asked how long before officers could get there.

“I don’t know, ma’am,” he said. “We have to respond to emergency life-threatening situations first.”

She responded: “This could be life-threatening. … I’m afraid for their lives!”

The agency that runs the call center, Law Enforcement Support Agency, said it would review the handling of the case and start a disciplinary investigation if necessary. A spokeswoman, Kris Dessen, said it was too soon to say if the response took longer than it should have.

Powell’s wife, Susan, vanished in Utah two years ago. Josh Powell has long been a person of interest but maintained at the time that he had taken his boys — then 2 and 4 — on a midnight camping trip in freezing temperatures when she disappeared from their home.