How & Why to Clear the Area Around the Campfire

Video Transcript

" Hi, this is Bruce Lessels from Zoar Outdoor on behalf of expertvillage.com. We’re going to talk about making a campfire and taking down a campfire and campfire safety. So when you’re going to build a campfire you want to make sure that your campfire doesn’t start the whole forest on fire or cause problems well beyond it. So one way to do that, is to make sure that the area well around the campfire is clear to any burnables. In a case like this where there are just dead leaves and things in the surface, what you can do is just scrap it back and make sure that you’re creating a good wide ring around the fire of non-burnable soil and stuff that’s not going to catch on fire if a flame does jump out of the fire. You can pretty easily do that, the green stuff is not as likely to burn so that’s not as much of an issue. Again, in a well used fire area in a place where you’re reusing an existing fire pit, this probably already been done and you probably already have a nice clear unburnable area around the fire. Once you’ve cleared the area around the fire make sure you also store your firewood far enough from the fire, that that doesn’t catch and you’ll want to make sure that you keep that a good distance away from the fire. So again there’s not an opportunity for the fire to leap out of the campfire ring and catch your fuel wood on fire."