My scariest wildfire in California I was 9 years old

 We were returning to Los Angeles and Glendale where we lived then and I was 9 years old and my father wanted to drive through the Sierras past Lake Tahoe I think on the way back from Mt. Shasta and a religious conference we had been at for 2 weeks then at Shasta Springs in between Dunsmuir and the little City of Mt. Shasta. So, I think we might have been on Highway 50 which is one of the routes over the Sierras past Lake Tahoe. However, the problem became a fire that was crossing the road we were on. There wasn't the communication then that we have now by the way so things just happened then and often you just had to grin and bear it whatever it was and people died a lot more from fires and weather in general then worldwide without good weather reports etc. 

So, when the fire was burning up the road we were on I was scared that we were going to burn up too. Then the fire was going to burn down a small town on Highway 50 I believe and the power was out because the power lines had burned down too. So, you couldn't get gas anywhere because there was no power. Finally, we found a gas station where the guy there had a gasoline generator to get power to his gas pumps. He was selling only 5 gallons of Gas to everyone because they knew their little town was about to be burned to the ground. So, with these 5 gallons of gas we were able to save ourselves and not burn up in the forest fire.

This is likely the scariest fire for me because out lives were at stake. This would likely have been 1957 in the High Sierra Mountains somewhere near Lake Tahoe on the South end of it.