Ok. But if the fire escape is effectively blocked because of congestion by the number of people trying to use it, then maybe it is necessary to review the number of fire escapes, escape routes etc. Standing around waiting for the escape to clear amounts to pretty much the same, not being able to reach a place of safety in a reasonable time.

So how would that work in practice?

You're standing at the back of a mass of people on a fire exit route and the mass is not moving forward, so you stand and wait.  Meanwhile, the people at the front of the mass (round the corner, out of sight) are face-to-face with a blockage / missing staircase / locked door / wall of flame / otehr problem.  They can't go back because of the mass of people behind them who are backed up and can't see that there's a problem with the route.

Surely a stationary mass of people IS a compromised escape route.  You can't escape down it.

If I was trying to escape a burning building and couldn't get down a route with 'fire exit' signs, I'm not going to stand their waiting for death if I think there's another way out.

I have been in various situations where no amount of training and signage actually helps some people to think to escape from danger. They have to be led cajoled or even dragged to the direction of a place of safety. In one instance during an unannounced evacuation drill from 19th storey building in London, people stopped going down the escape stairwell as there was no room to step down. Nobody could move and with a thousand people in one stairwell it started to get hot. The rest of the building had cleared out of the other exits but this one stairwell wasn’t moving. 25 minutes later the doors to the floors were opened from the inside (remember from a fire escape you can’t open them) and we went across office space then out the other exits. So no problem it was only a drill, really? 4>5 people were injured going down the stairs 19 storeys = 38 flights of stairs, sprains and strains and one broken hip and this was only a practice drill. Which exit you use is up to the individual but most folk go out the way they came in and in this instance they were encouraged away from the lifts but in that area there are four emergency stairwells and they didn’t get used as people went for the outer end escape route. Lessons were learned and a lot of people appreciated how physically hard it is to slowly step down stairs for 20 minutes to get out to a place of safety. In a large building with many companies in it, the Facilities Manager or such must have a workable fire evacuation plan not just a fire drill plan where people can evacuate from anywhere in the building and not just the emergency exit allocated. I for one would always encourage people to look for an alternative escape route preferably up wind and not too high up in a building.