When I was 16 years old I used to fly two man gliders out of a place Called El Mirage dry lake in the deserts outside of Los Angeles County where I mostly grew up. One of the things you learn flying a glider is that you want to be in an updraft caused by the heat. In fact, then they had glider races to Arizona and back where pilots searched for heat thermal updrafts so that even though the nose of the glider had to be somewhat down to not stall the glider's wings you could still be going up in a heat thermal and fly all the way from the deserts near Los Angeles County all the way to Arizona and back then by searching for heat thermals.
However, in the case of fires it is the heat of the ground and the fires that cause the heat thermals and fire swirls which can be very dangerous to people putting out the fires because like all kinds of winds during a fire they can change in an instant and put fire engines and fire fighters in danger where they cannot get out of this danger and then they are gone. This also happens to people who stay too long at their properties and houses and get enclosed by the fires and cannot escape.
My thought often in a case like this is that you either need a swimming pool or pond to get into in this sort of situation. However, if the smoke is blowing towards you this also can kill people because you cannot breathe that much smoke and survive either. So, it's not only the fire that can kill. In fact, in houses most people die of smoke inhalation even if they survive the fire and run out of the house or building they later die because of smoke damage to their lungs.
One way to avoid this problem is to crawl on your hands and knees out of a situation if it is safe enough and you have time enough to do this to avoid smoke inhalation and eventually death from a fire in a building or house.
People who live in California deal with fires sort of like people in Florida deal with Hurricanes. People talk about earthquakes in California but I haven't really seen or been in a big one for over 20 years now above about a 5.0. And that time it was my then 5 year old daughter swimming in a pool with the water sloshing out where I told her to stay in the center of the pool on a floatie toy and away from the edges where it might push her into the cement where she might hit her head. My legs were wet up to the knees during this incident from water splashing out over the edges of the pool from the earthquake by the way. She did as I asked of her and survived this incident without injury too which I'm very grateful for.
Another idea to survive a fire where you are is something like the old bomb shelters from the Cold War or underground shelters people build to survive tornadoes. But, even then if smoke gets into your shelter you could still die from smoke inhalation so this is something to consider too. This is why getting upwind of a fire is important because at least then the fire is burning away from you and not towards you.
Our house cleaner and I were joking about a fire a retired Navy Fire Captain and I almost died in in 2008 or 2009 near Santa Barbara. My wife's father had passed away and we were guarding his property from the fire in Montecito near Santa Barbara. So, as the fire got closer I wanted to see exactly where it was. However, the retired Naval Fire Captain and I didn't know one thing which was that the sign for that area of California that you have evacuated your home was to open your living room curtains and to turn on all your lights (in this one area). So, when we saw curtains open and lights on we believed that people had not evacuated yet because we didn't know this at the time.
So, we drove to where it was very dangerous to be where there were no firemen or police guarding the area which was a mistake. So, when I came down roads from the hills that were paved I realized I couldn't survive doing this because houses were all on fire on both sides of the road and natural gas mains were spouting flames 20 to 30 feet high next to the road. I finally in desperation turned around realizing that not only were there no firefighters there there were also no police or people either because everyone had left so they wouldn't die.
So, I went up on the mountain more realizing we might not survive this. Then we saw a fire station that was being evacuated (and later burned down) where a firefighter told us the last dirt road out of there they they also were about to take. So, this is how we survived that fire and how we didn't know that people had evacuated because they had their living room windows open with their lights on.
My wife as angry with me for several months because our Lexus then smelled like smoke for several months after that inside the vehicle.
But, we survived all that anyway. So, if you are near a fire in Santa Barbara County and people's drapes are open with the lights on it means that they have already evacuated the fire!
Also, it is quite common when there are Santa Ana winds that the desert winds push fires into Malibu from about where the Ventura Freeway (Highway 101) and Las Virgenes canyon Road heads to Malibu and people often have to go into the ocean to avoid being burned up in these fires. This happens every few years or so almost like Clockwork from the Santa Ana Winds during a fire in this area.
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