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Survivors of that mid-rise fire last week describe the event as an office workers nightmare.

“The hallway was full of smoke. The stairways were full of smoke,” said Dawn Herring.

“And when I opened the door to go downstairs it was full of smoke. The lights was on but you couldn’t see your hands it was so thick,” said Jerry Adams.

Survivors aren’t the only ones talking.

Last week’s fire that trapped office workers and led to the deaths of three of them has the nation’s fire experts talking too.

Robert Solomon in Boston is one of the nation’s leading experts on high-rise fires. “It sounds like the conditions became so untenable, so deplorable in such a short period of time, and that’s not the type of fire growth we’d expect in a typical office building.”

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A Northeast Houston office building that caught fire last was heavily damaged by the blaze and was until Wednesday too dangerous for investigators to enter,

In fact, Solomon says typical office buildings rarely ever have serious, fatal fires.

The National Fire Protection Association he works for found that nationwide, office buildings account for less than one-percent of all structure fires.

And usually, no one dies.

Nationwide only four people on average a year die in office fires.

That’s out of a total of 3140 total deaths from all fires which makes the Houston fire extraordinarily rare.

What’s more, most office fires are small.

Fewer than 20 percent ever spread beyond the room where they started. What then caused last week’s fatal event?

There were reports the fire began in an area where medical supplies were stored, possibly including oxygen tanks.

“Was there some process going on in there that maybe nobody realized,” said Solomon.

And why, as survivors said, did stairwells fill with smoke?

“The exit stairwell itself is intended to be a pristine, safe environment,” said Solomon.

Add it all up and last week’s fire was unusual in most every way.

Last week’s mid-rise fire was unusually big and unusually deadly.

But for those very reasons, it gives a rare lesson in what to do if it ever does happen to you.

First, take any report of fire seriously.

Some survivors, like Jerry Adams, said they didn’t initially. “A lot of people were under the impression it was just a trash can, small fire.”

Second, use stairs not elevators to escape but what if that’s not possible?

Dawn Herring said she and others couldn’t use the stairs. “So we had to come back in the office. We covered the floor under the door to make sure no smoke can get in.”

Was that the right thing to do?

Yes, says Solomon. “They acted appropriately. And at that point you do have to rely on the firefighters coming to get you.”

The firefighters did come, making dramatic rescues for all but the three who could not be reached in time.

Three deaths in a massive, fast-moving fire that defied the odds by ever happening at all.

Investigators will be looking at two other serious issues:-- would more automatic sprinklers have kept the fire from spreading?

And why did some survivors say they never heard fire alarms?

Investigators have said the building met the city fire code prompting talk that the code needs to require more safety devices for older office buildings.