Bravo!

I'm rather new to the ETS forums myself, but allow me to extend the hand of welcome... or is that olive branch? No, that's peace... anyway, welcome to the forums.

I think your overall performance in this crisis was excellent. You have already carefully analysed your performance and found a few mistakes; I can see none that you haven't already seen yourself. They were:

1) Forgot your bag
2) Had no familiarity with the stairs you used for egress
3) Jumped off the loading dock

Corrections to these problems that you can make:

1) Don;t forget the bag next time
2) You know the stairs now. Check out all the others soon, in case they are blocked in a future evac scenario
3) Don't jump off any more loading docks, especially not in a suit and suit-worthy shoes

I would place Matt26's suggestion as the #1 priority. My only other concern was that if your wife picked up your son only 20 minutes before, how did you know that? Did she, or the daycare center, confirm that she had picked him up? In a crisis, knowing where your son is and how to get to him will naturally be your primary concerns, so don't wait till the next crisis to research the daycare center's procedures and formulate a plan for yourself.

JCWohlschlag's suggestion about the fire alarm is also excellent. I would suggest communicating this suggestion to your building management, as well as requesting a thorough review of the building's emergency procedures; somebody was off the track with the PA announcement, and it also sounds to me like your building has no set rendezvous places for the tenants in the event of an evac.

My building not only has an evac plan, but we conduct evac drills once perr year, and we have rendezvous points for each group and floor. I work in a much smaller office than yours, in the suburbs of Baltimore. We're not crammed into a high-rise, and we have plenty of open area around the building; setting up rendezvous and check-in procedures might be difficult for you in such a dense urban environment, but it's something to suggest.

The purpose of the rendezvous and check-in is to make certain that everybody is out of the building; this reduces the possibility that firefighters might have to risk their lives searching for trapped people, and gives everybody a destination that they can program into their brains in advance. And if everyone knows where to go, it will be easier to find your son, and easier to share resources such as water or first-aid supplies, and much easier for the authorities to disseminate information and instructions.

Your story has inspired me - I am the fire warden for my section of the building, and normally just get everyone out and take a roll call. But I am going to put together a BOB for evacs with some of the stuff you have in yours (water, flashlight, radio, and FAK).