Oh, man, that is so right.
Ells and Gees, I work in a fire trap. Some of you do too. I have been my own fire marshal many times.
The courthouse that is my main haunt was built in 1960. It has nine stories. It has escalators which funnel people zig-zag from the first through the sixth floors. The escalators would also funnel smoke and fire into a tornado. When this was realized about ten years ago they installed swinging doors that automatically swung shut when the alarm sounded.
The courtrooms, every one of them, are carpeted.
Wooden bench seating.
Where there are windows, they are barred.
No sprinklers.
No sprinklers.
The building is so old that it has been built onto as the population exploded. There are now courtrooms on seven of the nine floors. Many days of the year there is a long line of people outside to get in.
There is one courtroom in particular that has inspired my inner fire marshal. To get to it you take the escalator up to the fourth floor. You are deposited out into a long, wide linoleum hallway (If this is sounding too opulent for you, get over it.). You are in the middle of the building. If the courtroom opened out onto this hallway it wouldn't be so bad, it would still be bad but not as bad, but it doesn't do that. To get to this courtroom you have to walk a few steps down the long, broad hallway and then make an abrupt 90-degree left turn down a short, narrow corridor. Then make an abrupt 90-degree left down a longer, narrow corridor. You are now at the very front of the building. Off this longer, narrow corridor are an office facing the street, another courtroom facing the long, wide linoleum hallway in the middle of the building but back-exiting (for the judge and lawyers) into this longer, narrow corridor, there is a judge's chambers on the street side and the corridor dead ends in the courtroom that made me a fire marshal. There are two standard handle office doors sandwiching the most absurdly small "foyer" you've ever seen. People get bottle-necked there. The courtroom is like all the others carpeted.
If there was a fire in this area during court rush hour, say 10 o'clock on any week day, and everyone in this area started moving post haste out of their offices and courtrooms and chambers into this longer narrow corridor, there would be mass casualties.
But wait, there's more. The courtroom in question is, for some reason, always crowded, more crowded than any other. All the seating is taken. People are standing. They turn the air conditioning down low before the start of court. When I've been in there 15-30 minutes early it is freezing. Give it an hour-hour and a half and it will be warm with body heat, there are so many people in there.
It is on those many occasions of warm and getting warmer with overcrowding when I have played fire marshal. I have said on a couple of occasions to colleagues sitting next to me, "Man, if there was a fire in here now, we'd never get out."
There is no "Seating Capacity ---" sign like you see in restaurants, movie theaters. I'm trying to picture in my mind's eye that courtroom when it's jam-packed to estimate the number of people... Three or four, four, wooden benches...How many people to a row?...20? Okay, go with 20 people per row, four rows, eighty people in the audience. The public defenders, 1-3; the prosecutors, 2-4 or five with interns, 3 clerks, the jury box filled with police officers, two rows, I guess six or seven seats per row, the judge, bailiff, and, say, 10 private attorneys. How many is that? 110-115. Everybody not in the audience, so 30-40 attorneys and cops, defendants when their names are called, and witnesses, have to make their way down a narrow aisle with people standing against the wall to get to the front of the courtroom, before the judge, or to exit the courtroom. There are two points of ingress and egress, the one I've described and one that is used almost exclusively for the judge and the bailiff. If you exited through what I'll call the judge's exit, you're in hallways that empty you out at the very end of the main long, broad hallway. You've gone half-way through the building. Nobody uses the judge's exit is the point. Every uses the bottle-neck.
But wait. To the left and behind the judge's bench is another room. It's where the jury deliberates when there's a jury. It's where the lawyers go to talk or use the bathrooms when there's not. There's always somebody in that back room, not many, I'll say two or three at a time. There is NO EXIT from that jury room. If people, during a fire, saw that door, they might head for it. And be trapped. If they headed for the main exit, they'd be crushed and trampled. If they headed for the judge's exit they'd have their best chance. Depending on where the fire is. If the fire is off the judge's exit you'd be running into the inferno; if the fire is anywhere other than in this courtroom, you are literally toast; any way you exit you are running into the fire. And before you get there, you'll probably be crushed, trampled and suffocated. Enjoy your courthouse experience.
