Oil floats on water. If you pour water on an oil fire, the oil floats and continues to burn. So one uses a foam or carbon dioxide for such.Hot smoke and gases are lighter and rise. The fire fighters advice escapees to crawl because the cool fresh air will be more at ground level. Oil well fires can be put out by a well placed explosive. The sudden vacuum extinguishes the fire.

People jump down to safety on inflated air bags that cushion the fall.

Consider floods:

Increase buoyancy to enable a person to keep the nose out of water. Even a 2 litre empty water bottle tucked in the armpit is enough to keep the nose out of water. Use low head high capacity pumps to drain flooded basements.