First of all thanks for the nice responses, I'm learning a lot
Now a little background:

This takes place in South America in a building with European style construction that in my opinion has as many security flaws as you can ever see.

24 floors about 4 to 6 apartments per floor
There is no fire alarm
There is no fire system at all
We are in the last floor with access to the roof top (we have a swimming pool and grill up here)
We have 4 elevators with automatic doors
Only 1, repeat only 1 stairs

We could smell the smoke here and then one of the building janitors started to call everybody by the internal phone to evacuate the building.

EoK