Dozens of fire chiefs packed the state Capitol on Wednesday, protesting a plan to reduce the numbers of exits required in smaller apartment buildings.

The proposal is designed to ease Connecticut’s housing crisis, but firefighters said it could put lives at risk.

If you’re looking for an apartment that you can actually afford, you might be looking awhile.

“Oh, it’s so expensive to live here,” said renter Pedro Acero.

Arnacia Blake gave up the search altogether.

“All the prices and everything went up, so it’s like, right now I’m staying with family,” she said.

One solution could be fewer exits. Buildings up to three stories tall are required to have two exits, but that makes it hard for developers to build.

“There’s a lot of things in the building code that can make this difficult, but one of the biggest is the requirement for a second stair. The stair has to be on the opposite end of the building. It leads to very large buildings that can be quite expensive,” said Stephen Smith, with the Center for Building in North America. “It really requires you to buy a very large piece of land and build a very large apartment building.”

To add new housing, Connecticut is considering changing the state fire code.

Complexes up to five stories tall could have a single exit – but only under certain conditions. They must be equipped with automatic sprinklers, fire-resistive construction and a pressurized stairway.

Each floor could only have four units and each apartment must be within 20 feet of an exit.

But on Wednesday, firefighters warned a state panel that the change will put tenants in danger.

“You’re reducing it to one way in and one way out,” said Lt. Kevin Burke, the Hartford fire marshal. “People will die. You’re going to lose people.”

The head of Stamford’s fire department said it would make firefighters’ jobs harder too.

“We’re trying to fight a fire from the stairway. That's what we do – protect the interior stairway,” said Chief Rex Morris. “We want them out of the building. We don’t want them there, but we don’t want them to come down the same stairway.”

The International Building Code allows single exits for buildings under three stories. But in New York, Seattle and several other cities, it’s now six floors. And in Germany, Switzerland and South Korea, high-rises up to 20 stories only need one exit.

Fire deaths are not any higher in those places, according to a recent Pew Charitable Trust study conducted with Smith’s advocacy group.

“Modern apartment buildings have lots of features that were not around in the 1860s when this rule was developed,” Smith said. “We’ve got sprinklers, we've got enclosed stairways, we've got pressurization systems for the stairways.”

But Blake isn’t convinced.

“It’s six floors and there’s a bunch of people and we’re all trying to get out,” she said. “That’s a fire hazard. It’s a safety hazard.”

The public can submit testimony on the proposal until Oct. 11 by emailing DAS.CodesStandards@ct.gov.

The proposal then faces a vote at the General Assembly’s bipartisan Regulation Review Committee.