Thinking it over - In Case of Fire ...

Well it's the incongruity of this that caught me. It often does. Whoever owned this fire escape felt they needed to stop people from using the steps to gain entrance to the building or some other mischief. So they had a garden gate installed at the foot. It was ineffective of course, as a vandal could still just hop over the rail or the gate and land on the steps. So they removed the bottom four steps. As if someone agile enough to hop the rail could not simply hop to the fifth step. And actually it only makes another entrance to the stairs. Now the gate is ineffective. What’s next? It is a fire escape.

The Profile (more than you really wanted to know) is here.