RICHMOND -- At least two Virginia Tech employees had informed their family members well before the rest of the campus community received the first details about the April 16, 2007, shootings that resulted in 33 deaths, according to revisions to a state panel report on the incident.

But the university is disputing how that information was characterized in the revised report, which was made public Friday.

The updated report sheds additional light on communications failures that were underscored in an initial investigation by a gubernatorial panel in 2007. The panel criticized Tech officials for not moving swiftly to alert the campus about an early-morning dormitory shooting that preceded a second deadly rampage in Norris Hall.

A revised timeline in the report indicates that at least two members of Tech's emergency "policy group" notified their families about a shooting incident in a campus dormitory at 8:05 a.m. on April 16, more than an hour before the entire campus community was alerted. Tech's Center for Professional and Continuing Education locked down on its own about 8 a.m., and Tech's veterinary college did the same more than an hour later, according to the report.

A Tech official also ordered President Charles Steger's office to be locked at 8:52 a.m. as campus leaders prepared a notice about the first shooting incident, according to the timeline. The timeline also indicates that an initial effort to send a campuswide message about the incident failed because of technical difficulties with the alert system.

But Tech spokesman Mark Owczarski said Friday that Steger's office never was locked.

An official notice about the shooting in West Ambler Johnston Hall went out at 9:26 a.m. Nearly 15 minutes later, gunman Seung-Hui Cho began a shooting spree in Norris Hall that ended with 31 dead, including himself.

Some victims' families said the updated chronology raises further questions about why Tech officials failed to provide earlier, campuswide notice of the dormitory shootings of students Emily Hilscher and Ryan Clark.

"It's just beyond comprehension," said Lori Haas, whose daughter was wounded in Norris Hall. "What were they doing?"

The timeline has multiple references to policy group members without identifying them by name, and Haas wondered whether the report was crafted to avoid holding specific officials accountable.

"It still just feels like they're trying to cover up," Haas said. "They're trying to make the policy group look good or excuse their behavior. Why are they trying to do that?"

Owczarski said two employees singled out for notifying their families were staff assistants, one of whom worked in Steger's office. The other worked in the executive vice president's office.

"In one case, a mother called to wake up her son for class and also informed him that there had been a shooting on campus," Owczarski said in a statement. "She instructed him to go to class that morning. The other staffer received a phone call from the university while she was dropping her children off with her mother. During the course of conversation, she told her mother she had to leave because there had been a shooting on campus.

"If these are the two notifications that the amended report alludes to in its findings, clearly they do not comprise a concerted effort by University staff to notify their own families of danger in advance of notifying the campus community."

But such distinctions make no difference to those who were left in the dark on the morning of April 16, said Robert Hall, an attorney representing two victims' families who have filed lawsuits against Tech and other state and local entities.

"It was people who were given the facts and took it as a serious potential risk, and the students who were not given the facts didn't have a way to protect themselves," said Hall, who is representing the families of slain students Erin Peterson and Julia Pryde.

Holly Adams Sherman, whose daughter Leslie died in the shootings, said details in the new timeline "might be a difference between negligence and gross negligence."

"Will the other families feel as if they've been cheated because that other information wasn't available at the time we settled?" said Sherman, referring to an $11 million settlement the state reached last year with most of the victims' families. Sherman said she wants to put the ordeal behind her.

The report was revised by a consulting firm that worked with the panel Gov. Tim Kaine appointed in 2007. Kaine agreed to have the report revised to reflect new information and to include changes requested by victims' families and Tech officials. The state paid TriData, a division of System Planning Corp., $75,000 to update the report.

"Certainly a number of items in the narrative have been improved, corrected, supplemented and added to," Kaine said Friday. "But in terms of the recommendations that the panel made, I think all of the corrections demonstrate that their recommendations were sound."

Some families wanted Kaine to reconvene the panel, but panel members reached Friday said they had input on the revisions and believe the updated report strengthens their original work.

"It's my hope that the families will find this to be sufficient," said Diane Strickland, a former Roanoke Valley circuit court judge and panel member. "I can certainly empathize with their concerns that there were pieces of information missing -- and I suspect we'll always have pieces of information missing and that they want the report to be as complete and comprehensive as possible. I do think that the governor's approach worked well."

The panel's findings were not altered by the discovery of a missing file detailing care Cho received at Tech's Cook Counseling Center after a court ordered him to get mental health treatment in 2005. But the new report cites more "unconnected dots" and reiterates that Tech administrators and police failed to heed warnings about Cho's erratic behavior and dark writings.