My personal feeling on this is that the risk calculus for wealthy people is different to the risk calculus for the poor, and as a result we get decisions that don't really make a lot of sense for anyone.
If you were to tell 20 year old me that I could save say £100-£200 on rent by taking a bit of a gamble on the fire escape then I'd be ordering climbing gear and practicing climbing out of the window with my harness.
The probability of any apartment building that I'm in catching fire and going full Grenfell is basically zero, as far as I remember it's happened one time in approx ten years in London.
I'm probably more likely to die in a crash whilst sitting on the bus.
It makes far more sense IMO to focus on reducing the flammability of objects, having fire doors, etc.
If you were to tell 20 year old me that I could save say £100-£200 on rent by taking a bit of a gamble on the fire escape then I'd be ordering climbing gear and practicing climbing out of the window with my harness.
The probability of any apartment building that I'm in catching fire and going full Grenfell is basically zero, as far as I remember it's happened one time in approx ten years in London.
I'm probably more likely to die in a crash whilst sitting on the bus.
It makes far more sense IMO to focus on reducing the flammability of objects, having fire doors, etc.