Fire escapes are a thing, and required in tall buildings, so it works exactly as stated.

Fire escapes are definitely not "required". You rarely ever even see them out of NYC and within NYC they've been banned since 1968.

It‘s worth noting they were banned because they weren‘t actually safer. Cramped apartment dwellers would use fire escapes as an extension of their square footage, blocking paths to safety. And they were so rarely used and tested that fire escapes becoming overloaded and detaching from the building was not uncommon.