Was likely 5 or 10 years ago in Santa Barbara. But, because I don't live there full time I didn't know about one rule that locals did. The way people let the fire and police and first responders know they had evacuated was to open their living room curtains and to turn on the living room lights. But, I didn't know this during this particular fire. I think it was called the Tea Fire and it was getting near to my father in laws house in Birnum Wood in Montecito. So, I took my wife's new Lexus and a friend who was working for us who was a retired Fire captain in the Navy to see just how close the fire was getting to us. But, what almost cost us our lives was not knowing about the open living room windows with the lights on that meant everyone living there had evacuated. So, as we drove up further and closer to the fire through many fancy homes in Santa Barbara we noticed we were getting nearer to the fire. So, finally I was getting near to where the fire I could see actually was. Then we drove by a Fire station that looked really busy somehow. So, we left the fire station area and tried to go down into town the only road we knew went through. However, since we had gone up it into the mountains it was now on fire completely. I tried to run the gauntlet so to speak until I saw fountains of Gas mains bursting 20 feet into the air and realized I wasn't going to make it any further on this street so I turned around and went back to the Fire Station to ask for help. The Fire station it turned out was being evacuated because they expected it all to burn down at that point. So, I asked the fireman if there was another way out not through the fire!
He said there was still one route out that they were going to take to survive this themselves which went a little higher on the mountain where no fire was approaching then. So, we took this partly paved partly dirt road out to safety but my wife's Lexus smelled like smoke for several months after that and she was mad at me about this.
So, not knowing the local rules can almost cost you your lives if you don't know fully what is going on. The areas on fire had NO fire people or police or anyone like there at all I found out because the fire was just too dangerous with no escape even for fire personnel there. So, we had been somewhere even firemen knew not to go into because it wasn't safe enough even to fight the fires there then.
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