Reason #324 For Being Ready To Evacuate on a Moment's Notice

Mostly you don't want to be this guy.  The wildfires are hammering southern California this week and people have had very little time between "hey there's a fire coming this way" and mandatory evacuations being instituted.  If you find yourself in such a situation...

• Get your vehicle out of the garage and ready to go.
• Top off the fuel tank of the vehicle if you have stockpiled fuel (or if you have time, siphon it from another vehicle).
• Gather all of the family (if you don't know where someone is, get a hold of them immediately to determine if they are already outside of the evacuation zone).
• Institute your evacuation drill (someone gets the BOBs, someone gets the pets, someone gets the pet BOBs, someone throws any other needed stuff into the vehicle--bottled water, extra camping gear, extra food, etc...this should be practiced way ahead of time, not determined when you are actually in the midst of evacuating; someone lets the cattle loose, everyone gets in the vehicle and someone sweeps the house to lock the windows, shut off utilities, turn off the HVAC system, post a "we have evacuated" sign in a window, etc).
• You use the information you have from local news/DEM to determine your best evacuation route.
• You evacuate to a pre-determined BOL (bug out location).

Needless to say, you should not be doing all of the above-mentioned things if you can see fire around the perimeter of your home.  You need to pay attention to the news and evacuate ahead of any mandatory evacuation order which will give you time to do all of the evacuation tasks listed above and not put yourself and your family in danger a la the guy in the video above.