Not a hope in hell for that, with the sort of tight updraft the fire was producing. With a fire that is mostly internal, sure. It's a tricky fly, but doable. Once it goes external though - the updraft would knock you out of the sky like a hammer.
I think now that the mechanism of fire propagation has been recognized, an examination of firefighting tactics is in order, too. Had the firefighters been able to breach the cladding and use that updraft behind it to carry steam (from water put on the blaze) through the flue that was aiding the fire in its spread, they may have been able to slow the spread of the fire, if not stop it. It would require hitting the fire near the base with a fog, not a straight stream, and letting the air movement carry the water droplets into the space the fire was moving in. As those convert to steam (and they will) they expand tremendously and cool the fire. We used the technique on smaller structural fires, using the steam conversion to extinguish fires in walls, with great success. Those however were much smaller buildings. In this case, (and I wasn't there and hate to second guess the firefighters on scene), it might have bought some more time for residents to get out.
Part of the problem, aside from the tremendous heat, is that with the outside of the building so fully involved, there is little oxygen getting to the core of the building itself, and the fire is a cruel competitor for whatever oxygen is present in the building. Staying low to the floor is a good idea for escape because there is almost always an inch or two of breathable air down there, but when there is little oxygen and high temperatures, and people are trying to do so on steps, well, that doesn't work quite as well.
