“Throwing the book” at the building after the fire is usually more indicative of local authorities trying to play the blame game and shift any focus away from their nonfeasance and onto the building owner. A reasonable person would ask how often and when did the local authorities inspect this building? If the video clip is accurate it would seem to infer that many of the deficiencies presented not only have existed for many years. but were known to local authorities Why?

Despite the best efforts of all the model codes to provide the highest level of fire and life safety to all occupants regardless of occupancy classification, those efforts will always be in vain if the AHJ who has adopted the code does not actively and frequently inspect buildings within their jurisdiction as well as enforce the code when deficiencies are identified.

Fire prevention must always be a three-pronged effort: design review, construction review, and occupancy review. Unfortunately, too much effort is given to design and construction review and too little to occupancy review. The funding approach to fire prevention budgets explains why design and construction get more attention than occupancy. Another problematic and well-known failure is fire prevention occupancy inspections being conducted M-F from 8-5 and not when a given occupancy might be at most risk: for example a nightclub at 2 AM on a weekend, midnight Christmas mass, graduation ceremonies, etc.

It might be time for codes to start mandating periodic third-party or self-inspection by property owners of certain occupancy classifications with inspection findings and a legally binding plan of correction reported to the local AHJ.

Building fire safety cannot depend on an occasional inspection. While important, citations of deficiencies are not a good substitute for a culture of continuous fire safety. Any owner of a building with fire safety violations has failed. I have encountered some hardheaded folks who if you buried them with their head above ground, their head would outlast a tombstone! While there may be a variety of excuses and reasons, in my experience, ignorance of the nature and spread of building fires is often the problem. However, when I spend enough time and effort to educated them, most of them became advocates for fire safety instead of obstructions.
In the Hospital, I liked to have a department manager follow me around and dialog on the conduct of the inspection. They were without understanding or experience on topics like why derangement of a fire door was a bad idea. They became an extra set of eyes present far more often than an occasional inspector.
In all the years I have been interested in fire safety, I never saw much information aimed at the general public on topics like why it was bad idea to take gasoline down to the home basement to clean a greasy motorcycle part or leave an unattended candle (source of several fires I fought) or block the fire doors or hardware in a building. How can fire service people can get the respect they should have? Become teachers and mentors to the public. Do not stop at lamenting the dumb things people do, educate them proactively in every way possible. If one wants to be a leader, they must be a servant for those they wish to lead. If you would be first, you must be the servant of all and last, says scripture.