Yeah, I was surprised that it hadn't been brought up, too.

I'm not going to second guess the building construction - there are many "fatal" flaws in buildings that age and older. And keep in mind that the "custodian" of county buildings is normally the Sherrif's Department - not exactly subject-matter experts.

The smoke spread? Smoke dampers were not required in the duct work when that building was built. Nowadays, the HVAC system has to shut down completely if there is any smoke detected in the duct and/or if the fire detection system alarms AND smoke dampers close for exactly that reason (and possibly fire dampers as well, depending on specifics). Etc. etc. etc. Point is, unless the building you work in was built very recently, do not take ANYTHING for granted about the safety of the building. This was not a major fire, but 6 are dead so far.

The county building next door to me doesn't even have a building fire alarm system. I cannot force them to do anything about that unless they undertake major remodeling (fact - not a statement either way from me about is that good or bad). Last month they catastropically blew up their chimney (we're talking rain of bricks, emergency demolition of the stack, etc.) via an operator error. Lucky no one was injured...

So... unless you know professionally everything about the building in which you work, plan and be prepared for building evacuation. And try out alternative routes some non-workday.

My 2 cents.