Against a wildfire, you don't win by running. You win by deciding early, getting behind something solid for the few minutes the front takes to pass, then putting out the embers it leaves behind.
ACT
1. Raise the alarm, right now
112 (or your local emergency number, 18 for firefighters in France, 911 in North America), even for a fire that looks tiny. Give the most precise location you can: road, place name, visible landmark, direction of the smoke. A fire reported in the first minutes is almost always stopped.
2. A small fire, at your feet
You can attack it if the flames stay lower than your knees and you have a way out behind you:
- attack it from the rear or the flanks, never from the front;
- keep one foot in the black: stay on the already burned side, which can't flare up again;
- smother the flames with a leafy green branch, a shovel, a blanket, a wet sack, or throw earth with a shovel;
- if the flames go above your knees, or the fire moves faster than you walk, you're no longer putting it out: you're leaving.
3. The fire is coming towards your house
In France, the official advice is clear: a solid house with cleared surroundings is the best shelter. Don't leave on the road at the last minute. If you're going to leave, leave early, before the smoke is on you, or when the authorities tell you to. (Some countries, like Australia, advise leaving early in most cases: follow your local guidance.)
If you stay:
- Open the gate for the firefighters. Put cars away, or park them in a cleared area.
- Bring in anything that burns: garden furniture, cushions, umbrellas, firewood, jerrycans. Move gas bottles away from the house.
- Close everything: shutters, windows, doors, hatches. Block vents and the bottoms of doors with wet towels.
- Fill baths, buckets, bins: water for afterwards. The mains may cut out.
- Dress in cotton or wool, long sleeves, closed shoes. No synthetics, which melt onto skin.
- When the front passes, stay inside, away from windows, in a room on the far side. It's very hot, it's loud, it lasts a few minutes. Walls block the radiant heat that kills outdoors.
- As soon as it has passed, go out and walk round: embers on the roof, in the gutters, under the deck, in the hedges. Most houses burn after the front has passed, because of embers. That's the moment your water and your shovel save the house.
4. You're in a car
- Don't drive into smoke. Turn back while you can still see.
- If the fire catches you: park on ground without vegetation (car park, ploughed field, wide verge), headlights on, windows and vents shut.
- Stay in the car, lying below window level, under a wool or cotton blanket. The car won't explode. It will be very hot for a few minutes.
- Get out once the front has passed, and move into the burned area.
5. You're on foot
- Never flee uphill: fire climbs faster than you.
- Go to the side of the fire's direction, towards an already burned area, a wide road, a ploughed field, a body of water, a scree slope.
- Avoid gullies, ravines and saddles: fire speeds up there like in a chimney.
- Trapped: lie down in a hollow or behind a rock, face to the ground, cover yourself with earth or a wool blanket, protect your nose and mouth with a cotton cloth, damp if you have water.
ADAPT
The wind shifts. A calm flank becomes a fire head within minutes. Keep reassessing your way out, especially in the early afternoon.
There's smoke but no visible flame. Smoke travels far and fast. Close everything, wear a filtering mask if you have one, and listen to local radio to find out where the fire is. See Air contaminé.
Animals. Open enclosures and field gates: a free animal escapes better than a shut-in one. Bring dogs and cats into the house with you.
Children, elderly people. Leave early with them, at the first warning. You don't evacuate a vulnerable person through smoke.
Burns. Cool with lukewarm water for twenty minutes, see Burns.
Afterwards. Don't go into a burned area without permission: falling trees, smouldering stumps, ground collapsing over burned-out roots. And watch for hot spots at home for 48 hours.
UNDERSTAND
What kills in a wildfire is first of all radiant heat. It burns tens of metres from the flames, through the air. Anything that makes a screen, a wall, a car body, a rock, a bank of earth, cuts that radiation dramatically. Hence the rule: shelter behind something solid rather than run in the open.
The front passes quickly. At any given spot, the big flames only last a few minutes, a little longer in dense forest. Holding out behind shelter for that time is enough to survive in the vast majority of cases.
Most victims die on the road, fleeing too late, in smoke where they can no longer see. Hence the other rule: leave early, or don't leave.
A house with cleared surroundings holds: with no continuous vegetation up to the walls, the fire passes by and leaves only embers to put out. That's why clearing around houses is compulsory in at-risk areas. The full phenomenon is described in Wildfires, and firefighters' work in Fighting wildfires.