anyway, the fire escape ladders on amazon are useless if you have a 'bay' to your window...which would prevent it from 'hooking securely' over the window frame...and so some sort of rope ladder appears to be an alternative but what about a 'slide' eh? do they sell those 'slide out of the aeroplane' numbers, on amazon?

oh I see...you call them 'fire escape chutes'....

http://fire-escape-chutes.co.uk/

I can remember the police and firemen laughing at the ad below...because it looks like a near vertical descent and highly dangerous - go figure:

oh and I might add....somebody had gone and smashed the door to the 'dry riser' on the first floor landing, the other day...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_riser