As I didn't feel danger, I chose to go down the fire escape, using my cell phone for light, the others chose to do so as well. Importantly, I was going down irrespective of what others were going to do. If I felt danger in that situation, I would have chosen not to go down the fire escape. It would not matter what others were thinking or doing, I would stay put and call for more information.
As we started walking down the stairs, using cell phones for light, people were mostly calm. However given the darkness and presence of smoke, the fears were increasing and then the comments started. We are going to die and the like and there is not much you can do other than to tell people to stay calm and we will live and how far down we are and how the smoke is not getting worse, that can be enough to calm people down, though they can't hear much of that, the key is to keep moving, that they can do too.
We all got down without incident and were met outside with a number of fire trucks and medics, the latter were not needed as everyone was fine. It turned out to be an electrical fire the basement which had been extinguished.
As everyone was waiting outside, the shock etc started to kick in and then the comments really started. It was interesting to stand back and observe this, there was no point in engaging anyone, nor did I feel the need to. The comments were all the "could haves" could have died, could have fallen, could have been killed etc.
That brings us to the second lesson here, the more you engage in the "could haves" you are actually making the situation worse, a lot worse. Everyone has done this, so think back to when you did, what do you remember? Do you remember almost getting killed at a hotel, road or whatever or do you remember getting out of the hotel easily, or the fact that the other car did actually miss you?
For most people they remember the could have been, not that they were okay. Of course by the time you tell everyone the story, it becomes more ingrained and more difficult to let go of the experience. It makes the experience bigger and more traumatic than it has to be and keeps that active in your energy.
This example may just be a coincidence, a couple who were supposed to have been on the recent Air France plane crash, were interviewed about missing the flight. Less than 3 weeks later, they were in a car crash, the lady was killed in the crash.
