In the world we live in people love to go camping. It’s a great way to have fun with your family, obtain more knowledge about nature, and interact with nature. When everyone thinks of camping the first things that come to mind is a campfire, fishing, a tent, roasting marshmallows and telling ghost stories over the fire but what if things take a dramatic turn specifically the campfire becomes uncontainable and spreads into a wildfire.
What is a campfire?
A campfire is a fire in a given space at campsite that provides light and warmth, and heat for cooking. It can also serve as a beacon, and an insect and predator deterrent. Established campgrounds often provide a stone or steel fire ring for safety. Campfires are a popular feature of camping. Each year an average more than 40 million Americans went camping in 2016 for a total of 597.7 million days. The camping participation rate was 14 percent, the same as it was in 2015. What this shows that half to all of those Americans are making campfires to cook food or roast marshmallows to make s’mores. What some people don’t know is that there are different types of campfires that you can create. One of the types of campfires you can make and the most common is a teepee campfire. The teepee style fire is built by leaning logs onto each other over a base of kindling or dry brush. Another common type of campfire you can create is a Log Cabin Campfire. It allows air flow and elevates kindling above the initial flames of the tinder placed within the structure. It may be helpful to dig a slight trough under one side with which to accommodate the lighting of the tinder. One more common campfire that is easy and safe to build is a star campfire. A star fire, or Indian fire, is the fire design often depicted as the campfire of the Old West. Imagine five or six logs laid out like the spokes of a wheel star shaped, each log is pushed towards the center as the ends are consumed. It’s another fire that can be kept burning all night long with little maintenance. This creates more risk of wildfires and an uncontrollable campfire to break out this is because if you are not paying attention to the campfire the likeliness of it spreading is increased dramatically. Statistics have also shown that the age group that goes camping the most is 6 to 12 year olds and right behind them are 13 to 17 years olds increasing the chances of more wildfires and uncontrollable campfires to happen. The best known cause of wildfires or an campfire breaking out from kids in their teens or younger is them leaving a campfire unattended for long periods of time without checking up on it. It has been showed by factual evidence that campfire outbreaks are the #7 cause of wildfires in the United States. But still when we go camping we typically make a campfire for roasting marshmallows and to use as a heat source to cook our food and rarely to never think of what if things go wrong.
Knowing that campfires are one of the top causes of wildfires in the United States, are Americans considered about this situation? On average, more than 100,000 wildfires, also called wildland fires or forest fires, clear 4 million to 5 million acres (1.6 million to 2 million hectares) of land in the U.S. every year. In recent years, wildfires have burned up to 9 million acres (3.6 million hectares) of land. A wildfire moves at speeds of up to 14 miles an hour (23 kilometers an hour), consuming everything including trees, brush, homes, even humans in its path. Teenagers and children all love to play with fire. Without knowing sometimes children take gasoline jug that squirts the gasoline brought by the parents to spray on the burning campfire to make the flames and the fire grow gretter but this doing can cause an uncontrollable fire to happen leading to other scary scenarios to happen also and also can leave people injured. There are ways to prevent children from causing campfire outbreaks and problems. Some ways are to make sure to keep all flammable objects and materials away at a safe distance from the children, when sitting near a campfire set a distance to how close they can go near the fire. By doing these few steps can make a big impact in lessing campfire outbreaks. Going back to informing and helping putting out campfires safely there are a few steps that are easy to follow. Those steps are to first allow the wood to burn into ash, then pour lots of water on the fire, next continue to pour the water until the hissing stops, finally stir the campfire embers and ashes and make sure that everything is wet. These four simple steps can help prevent and help with any campfire problems that may happen. Also when building a campfire there are a few things to think about to better your chances of nothing bad happening. One of those few things you should think about that is very important is to camp in areas where wood is abundant if building a fire. Choose not to have a fire in areas where there is little wood at higher elevations, in heavily used areas, or in desert settings. This may cause some problems when starting the fire, during the fire, and after the fire. The best place to build a fire is within an existing fire ring in a well-placed campsite. Keep the fire small and burning only for the time you are using it. As said in the steps earlier make sure the wood burns completely to ash and put out the fire with water, not dirt. Dirt may not completely extinguish the fire. Avoid building fires next to rock out crops where the black scars will remain for many years. Following these two things can help you during camping trips when you’re trying to build a campfire.
What some people don’t know is how camp fires affect the environment. Campfires are a source of air pollution. Burning wood releases a large amount of compounds, including nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulate matters, benzene, and many other potentially toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Wood fires also release large amounts of carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas. A green house that will take in infrared radiation and will distributes the heat in many different directions. Greenhouse gases are one of the main contributors of global warming. When people sit by a campfire, or even just staying at a busy campground, the air pollution may be intense enough to cause eye and respiratory inflammation and trigger asthma or emphysema attacks. Also according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, fine particles which also called particulate matter are the most dangerous components of campfire smoke from a health perspective, as they can get into your eyes and respiratory system, where they can cause health problems such as burning eyes, runny nose and illnesses such as bronchitis. Fine particles also cause chronic heart and lung diseases and have been to premature deaths in those already suffering from such afflictions. The Environmental Protection Agency informs people that anyone with heart failure, angina, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema or asthma should steer clear of campfire smoke in general. Children exposure to campfire smoke should also be limited. Their respiratory systems are still developing and they breathe more air pollution per pound of body weight than adults. This can cause health problems later in life for those children from heart and breathing issues to even worse, death. Always keep children at a safe distance from campfires at all times to help prevent any health issues recommended by doctors and environmental specialist. Campfires doesn’t only affect humans but also animals. When some animals see a fire or get close to one they have a tendency to stay a certain distance away from not knowing what it really is and also the smoke from the fire might keep mosquitos away but the smoke also affect birds flying. When some birds fly exactly into a campfire’s smoke, they sometimes get blinded by the thickness and it can affect their breathing after traveling through it. Scientist and specialist don’t really have a clear way of preventing birds from flying into the thick smoke but they advise campers when completely finish with campfires, put them out safely helping the birds from going through the smoke. If campfires become uncontrollable and turn into wildfires it would cause deforestation. Deforestation is when an area in a forest is cleared of trees. If this happens the ecosystem will be out of balance. This is primarily due to the fact that birds and other organisms will not have a place to live and if their populations decline the same will be for their predators.
There are many organizations in the world that involves campfires. I joined a organization which helps give tips and steps on how to safely put out a campfire. What this organization does for us , the environment, and the world is that it helps give new campfires a plan to follow when putting out a campfire causing less injuries that may happen with the process of putting out campfires and also causing less environmental problems that can be caused by doing the wrong the steps. My part in this organization is to simply make valid safety steps that i can put around different campgrounds that people who go camping can read the simple instruction and put a campfires easy and fast. There are other organization that do more in helping with campfires and campers but just doing this simple part that i am doing can make a dramatic change. 90% of wildland fires in the US are caused by humans, most of which are accidental. The part i am doing in this organization is also all volunteer and it can bring down 90% too about 65% in a year if people join in fixing this problem all around the world. I have talked to some of my friends to see if they had any accidents that had happened and I was surprised to see the majority of my friends have had campfire difficulties. Most of them never really learned the proper way to start a campfire which led them to using gasoline and a match. This is a perfect example of what not to do. If by some way they spilt a little gasoline it could have went out of their intended area and spread to a nearby tree. An even worse scenario that could occur is they could have spilt some on themselves and potentially set themselves on fire and suffer from up to a third degree burn. Thankfully none of that happened, but I was glad to inform them about the proper methods to make a fire ex: A star fire and the proper way to put it out to ensure that there is no flames or lit ashes left.
An organization by the name of National Association of State Foresters has been a major role in preventing uncontrollable campfires especially in places such as YellowStone National Park for over 95 years. They are known for their lovable mascot Smokey the Bear. He is a bear that appears in their commercials when humans are seen doing a dangerous action while making a campfire that can cause a wildfire. His famous line that he says is “Only you can prevent wildfiresâ€- Smokey the Bear has a lot of meaning behind it because 6/10 wildfires are caused by campfires that get out of hand. I feel like this has a major impact in protecting people from the dangerous mistakes they could make while enjoying their campfire. It also gives us a mini lesson in each commercial because we can see the mistake and how to prevent it. An example of one of these lessons the National Association of State Foresters is the placement of your campfire. The commercial shows two men deciding where to place their campfire,one of the friends suggest an open area, and Smokey comes out and thanks them by giving them a hug. This 30 second commercial shows the importance of where to place your campfire. I have seen this commercial a number of times when I was younger and it stuck with me because of the comedic manner it was shown. Making campfire safety fun is important because the kids who are viewing the commercials are going to pay attention because it’s funny. Once they become older they will have knowledge of how to be safe with campfires and will be able to apply them when they go camping just from watching the National Association of State Foresters’ commercials. In my opinion I feel like campfire safety should be taught to less fortunate places because they don’t know the dangers of building a campfire incorrectly. Sadly, there has been a campfire tragedy. This happened in Borno March 31st. What had happened was a campfire in the heart of the village wasn’t built properly and spread quickly due to the fact of their homes being built of straw and they ground being very dry. It was said that there was no stone or metal ring around the fire. This took the lives of two young children and destroyed the homes of over 400 families. Everybody need the knowledge of campfire safety to prevent horrific events like this one.