Canada

It seems to be more that houses in the USA were being built cheap and burn down easier. While Europe obviously had the same issue with fires (looking at you Brugge - how often do you wooden town need to burn down, until you place a fucking stone?), but they approached it with better, fire proof materials - like bricks instead of wood.

The regulations in the USA seem to include those zig-zag stairs (probably I mixed up the name), where 2 stairways are on the same place, cross crossing each other.
In case of smoke/fire or demolition of this block, I don't see how those 2 stairs make a better exit, when they are in the same place.