I understand the point you're making but it doesn't consider that fire safety is made up of layers, including (but not limited to) construction, equipment, policy and response. "Ah shit my building is on fire, I better run" makes so many assumptions that it cannot be considered a meaningful fire safety strategy. For example, what if I am asleep? what if I am deaf? what if I cannot walk?
Certainly, there's disasters where multiple catastrophic failures result in horrific outcomes, but if we design policy around "absolute safety is impossible, so run" then we'll be less safe and more anxious. The safest buildings are big well-managed apartment buildings with shelter in place policies, because robust strategies that have been implemented from the ground-up are always going to beat half-baked strategies implemented based on an approximate understanding of single family home building regulations.
As glib as it is to acknowledge, apartment buildings are so safe because safety is built on the back of loss. I am benefiting from the lessons learned from every disaster that has come before.
Response was the first thing that came to mind reading your initial post. I bet you have a full-time fire service close by your building. 70% of the firefighters in the US are volunteers. I can think of several multistory apartment buildings that I know are in volunteer fire department districts off the top of my head. And it’s not like I memorize fire districts.
Volunteer firefighters live in rural areas and mostly serve farm and shall towns. Every suburb I've lived in has full time firefighters. Most people live in cities and suburbs not rural areas.
There are about as many people in rural areas with volunteer fire departments as there are people in non-rural areas with volunteer fire departments.
17% of the US lives in a rural area. 32% of the US population is covered by a volunteer fire department. There are plenty of suburbs with VFDs, often lower-income.
Because volunteers spend so much less of their time actually fighting fire. 70% of firefighters being volunteers doesn't mean anything like 70% of firefighting is done by volunteers.
And don't expect the volunteers to accomplish much--when the alarm goes off they have to go to the firehouse first, and thus will have a bad response time compared to a professional fire service. They're far more about keeping the fire from spreading than actually putting it out.
Certainly, there's disasters where multiple catastrophic failures result in horrific outcomes, but if we design policy around "absolute safety is impossible, so run" then we'll be less safe and more anxious. The safest buildings are big well-managed apartment buildings with shelter in place policies, because robust strategies that have been implemented from the ground-up are always going to beat half-baked strategies implemented based on an approximate understanding of single family home building regulations.
As glib as it is to acknowledge, apartment buildings are so safe because safety is built on the back of loss. I am benefiting from the lessons learned from every disaster that has come before.