I'm a lT. in the FD. in the past I have been assigned to our highrise team. The right thing depends....

First a modern highrise is built with fire saftey in mind. If its sprinklerd they will put out or confine the fire to a small area. If its compartmentized the fire will not spread far. Most likely it has an open floor plan though.

You have two stairways most likely named "A" and "B". One will be for fire attack and one for evacuation. You should be told by the FD over the "PA" system or a fire warden if you building has them, which to use. As you found out firemen coming up and folks coming down in the same is not good.....

The Fd will often have you shelter in place depending on the size of the fire, type of building, occupancy , use, number of floors etc.The basic is to evac. 2 floors above and 2 floors below as a start. Again based upon the fire, building ect.

Roof top ? Can you even open the door to it ? In Chicago a few years ago 4 people died at the top of the stairs.

Some stairways have smoke towers in them does yours ?? You should know. Those are made for you to use as they vent the smoke in a seperate passage.

What do you do in fire drills ? What do they tell you about sheltering in place Vs. leaving ?

The biggest error I see is people leaving via in the attack stairway.

Since they told sll to evac. I see that as the right thing, as that is what you were told.

Opening the door to the roof is something we my do to vent smoke, heat,and gasses. But the stairway must be clear of people and we would post guys to make sure. For a worker to do this could kill people trying to go down those stairs and now have smoke,heat gasses in the stairway.


A highrise fire makes the news because it RARE .The "big" highrise fires one sees on the news are almost always a case of the sprinkler system being turned off or otherwise not working correctly . That is THE ONE most important factor in your safety at work.