How to Smother a Campfire with Soil

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. We’ll take a little bit of soil and ideally you’re digging down below the organic soil down to the non-organic soil and you can kind of throw that on the fire and smoother it. The problem with using soil to put out a fire is it can insulate the fire and the fire can keep burning underneath the soil and so you haven’t really put it out and it may come back if you just use the soil although it is a quick method of extinguishing the flame. So even while I’m doing that I’m going to spread the coals around a little bit, trying to really keep searching for the stuff that’s still hot, still burning and I spread it around as much as I can keeping it within the pit the whole time. Once that has done its job I’m going to take some water and really kind of finely extinguish the fire, make sure it’s really out and I’m going to pour the water slowly. Kind of step back when you do this because usually creates some steam and once again I’m going to look for anything that’s still burning, anything that’s still smoking or steaming. I’m going to mix it around try to make sure I get all those embers, don’t leave anything at all to start another fire without me knowing about it."