Originally Posted by Burning Down

It's not paranoid nor is it ridiculous. It's a good idea to be prepared for anything like that. I value my life and I would not like to die in a fire - that would be absolutely brutal. I don't want to be cooked to death. Personal story time:

About four or five years ago I was staying overnight in my friend's dorm at my university, and the residence it was in is a typical high rise building - 11 floors. When I was there some drunk first year thought it would be a good idea to pour gasoline inside both elevators, press all the buttons, and set it on fire. So when the elevators opened on each floor, the fire would spread to the hallway. Then he threw newspapers soaked in gas at the bottom of all the stairwells except for one, lit it on fire, and ran away from the building. So nobody had a way out except for that one single stairwell, and people on the lower floors were just jumping off the balconies. I was on the 11th floor and thought I wouldn't get out, but I did.

Nobody died but tons of people were treated for smoke inhalation (myself and my friend included) and several people were admitted to hospital for second and even third degree burns. The school closed the building for the next few months and everyone in there had to go live in hotels until they opened the residence up again.

Oh yeah, the guy was caught, was expelled from school and he went to jail for a couple of years, and now he has no chance of ever enrolling in university or college anywhere. And since he was still underage at the time, the university sued his parents for all the damages - it ended up being in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.