<human>: Could you distill the essence of the text into 1-3 sentences?

Washington State.

The post the other day about the guy who had to break a door to get out of a locked stairwell reminded me of my college days. I lived in a 12 story door building. Two corners catty-corner from each other had stairwells. However, when you went into the stairwell, each door would lock behind you. The door can be opened with your building key, but if you forgot it, there would be no way to get back in without going all the way down to the first floor and trying to get someone to let you ride up the elevator with them.

I lived on the 12th floor. Instead of having two stairwell doors, to get to one door you would have to exit onto a balcony, then exit into the 2nd stairwell. However, soon after we moved in they locked all the doors and windows to the balcony because people kept smoking there (not us who lived on the floor).

This freaked me out because it meant if the fire alarm went off, if I didn't have my keys I would only have one stairwell to run down, I could easily be trapped in the one stairwell with no way to escape if there was a fire below me.
<bot>: is it legal for a 12 story building to only have doors that lock behind you on each floor, and for one floor to only have access to one stairwell?