Whose lives?
I'm sick of hearing "person of interest".
It probably saved the lives of the responders, the kids were dead or near dead within minutes of the door closing so a quicker response probably would not have saved them and would have risked responders in the explosion.
The real problem here is the complete stupidity of the social services twits who know the complete situation and yet turn over the kids to the suspect father at his own home with inadequate supervision to ensure their safety.