Now all that bric a brac everywhere, and none of them said, hey let's just build a pile of soft shit - seat cushions, probably styrofoam crap everywhere - over the side, jump, and roll. Broken arm or leg at the worst.
Are you joking? I hope you’re joking, though it seems a strange topic to joke about.
I understand what you are writing. It assumes that people are thinking clearly in a situation like this.
The part that you might be missing is that most of those people were dead or unconscious before the fire got near them. I am sure the floor was full of smoke and heat. No one will last long in that condition.
There are a lot of things a person “could” have done. But unless you practice that stuff, you will never think of it at the time.
It was FAST, pitch black with no lights, panic, almost immediately PEOPLE COULD NOT BREATHE ... there no time to thin and plan.
You got out immediately, or you did not get out.
There was no time to plan anything.
As a fire inspector, I run into people on a regular basis who I have to lecture about not putting any impediments to egress in their buildings--blocked and chained up exits, obscured or blocked aisles, etc. "If I see a fire in here, I can get out fast," they say. "No, sir," I say, "You can't. And neither can your customers. You have no idea how fast a building fills with smoke and a fire moves until you've been in one."
Fires generate carbon monoxide and, if plastics are present, hydrogen cyanide. All of that happens very quickly. It happens about ten times as fast as it did before plastics became so prevalent.
Firefighters have dropped dead after they’ve gone into a room with little to no smoke without their masks in place.
Warning: Live video of a fire where 89 people died.