It’s Fear, Frenzy When Fire Hits Home : Terror: The calamity of a brush fire is magnified when it threatens your home, not someone else’s.

Living in San Diego County, we all are aware of the warning signs: hot Santa Ana winds blowing in from the desert; brittle, dry shrubs covering the hillsides. We know it will happen. Then, as if our collective fears spring to life, we see the tell-tale black smoke that signals the onset of fire.

But fire never breaks out near us, never in our neighborhood, right? I wonder if that’s what people in Santa Barbara thought before last month.

I’m living proof that life- and property-threatening brush fires do happen. I’ve been through three of them. You would think I’d be ready for the shock and fear by now, but I guess some lessons are harder to learn than others.

One afternoon last January, I saw the black smoke over the rooftops as I drove on El Camino Real to my home in Encinitas. The smoke was coming from a fire in the open field behind my home, about a quarter-mile away. The wind was blowing it away from my house so, aside from the excitement it created, the fire wasn’t much cause for concern.

By the time I got home, however, my smugness was giving way to panic. The wind had changed direction, driving the flames toward my house.

The fire was closing in on stables just beyond the creek behind our back yard. Neighbors were starting to come out of their homes, staring, half in shock, half in disbelief, as the smoke grew darker and more dense.

I ran out, grabbed the garden hose and began to water down the wood fence and patio cover. My throat was dry and I started to cough. I undid the scarf that was holding my hair back and covered my mouth, tying it behind my head, outlaw style. I looked out beyond the creek and could no longer see the stables clearly because the smoke was so thick. Why weren’t the horses spooked?, I remember wondering. Where were the fire trucks? Why weren’t the firefighters coming over to this side of the creek? Why was it so quiet?

As if to answer, a malevolent gust of wind seemed to whip the smoke into a whirl of energy. I’ve never seen a tornado, but I imagine it is not unlike this funnel cloud of swirling ash and soot.

Suddenly the blast of sirens jolted me into the realization that, for the third time in my life, I might have to evacuate. My children were at a friend’s house and my husband was at work. It was up to me. I would have to pick and choose which pieces of our lives would be saved or forever lost. Whatever shred of rational thought I had clung to was lost to utter despair.

Tears streamed down my cheeks as I ran inside and then upstairs. I rushed from bedroom to bedroom in panic and confusion, grabbing whatever I saw first: Brian’s baseball cards, Kimberly’s black patent leather shoes, my husband Philip’s coaching trophies, even the book I was reading. I don’t know why I picked those things. I knew there were other things I should get out, but I couldn’t think clearly.

I threw what I collected over the banister and went back for more, all the time wondering, What would they want me to take? Which clothes? Which toys? Which books or tapes? Which artwork? Which family heirlooms?

Why hadn’t I ever asked what was important to them? It would have been so easy to ask last month, last week or even yesterday. Then I would have known what to take. If only I had.

I collapsed at the top of the stairs, watched the smoke billow in through the open sliders, listened to the sirens, surveyed my house, and cried.

Now I know how my mother felt in 1962, when the Bel Air fire roared through our Los Angeles neighborhood for four days, leaving hundreds homeless.

I recalled how my Mom, trying to disguise the fear in her voice, asked me to find Trudy, our dachshund, and get into the car. I watched my dad, garden hose in hand, climb onto the roof as we drove away. Dad stayed to save our house. Mom and I lost all contact with him for the rest of the day and night, not knowing whether he had been injured or our home had been spared.

That blaze started in accumulated refuse at a building site. In 1976, I survived yet another brush fire, this one started by two boys playing with matches in a park near the parochial school where I taught in Thousand Oaks.

The intense smell of smoke in the classroom gave us a moment’s warning before the principal ran in to tell us to get out. We herded 100 frightened children down the long driveway to safety in about three minutes.

As my first-graders wept and trembled, I watched the fire jump the school and consume the fenced-in playground. Moments earlier, we were getting ready to go out there for lunch. Had the fire started a few minutes later, the playground would have been a deathtrap.

Now I was facing my third fire, but I might as well have been a child again, for all the good I was doing. I was paralyzed, helpless.

Abruptly, mercifully, the wind changed direction again, and I was out of danger. But the unsettled feeling of helplessness haunted me for days. I could not allow myself or my family to ever be unprepared again.

We set aside a Sunday afternoon to discuss and plan the actions each of us would take if there were another emergency. We talked about indoor escape routes and meeting places, and made an evacuation list. First on Kimberly’s list was her special teddy bear, on Brian’s were his roller blades. Most of all, Philip and I wanted to save the photographs that chronicle our family history.

I think all of us, especially the children, feel more secure in knowing what will happen should disaster strike. I can’t stop fires from happening. But if faced with evacuation again, I won’t panic. I’ll know exactly what to do, what to take, and where to go.

After all, I know fire happens in my neighborhood. It could even happen in yours.