How to Use a Fire Signal

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is John Stewart, and this is how to use a fire for signaling. Once you've got a fire built, and you need to communicate with other people, or send out a distress, you can easily use a fire to help signal this. You need to get a really, really hot fire burning, with a really, really big flame first. This is usually accomplished by piling a bunch of wood; dead wood that's going to burn fast and hot. Once you've got that, you then need to put off a bunch of smoke. You want to have your fire in a open area so the smoke can rise. To get this smoke off, you can take and do two to three things. You can take and grab pine straw. It's very, very dense, real, real thick. Throw it right on top of your fire. You're going to think that it extinguished your fires, but it's just going to begin to put off a really, really thick white smoke. The other ways you can do this is using green live trees and sticks. These are goanna burn really, really slow, but they're going to smoke a lot. And then, using leaves, green live leaves is really, really important when signaling. They burn really slow, and they put off a really, really white smoke that can be seen from miles away. So if you want to get signaling, you can take and use live trees and leaves, and put them right on top, and just let it smoke. You can also signal by taking, and once you've got your smoke going you can take a shirt. If you have a friend there, just hold it over the smoke, not right at the base of the fire. Put a break in the smoke, and then move it out of the way, and that way you then let more smoke, and you have breaks in the smoke, to where obviously, someone's out there needing the help. Lastly, you want to take and always have a signaling fire set up; other than your basic fire that you're using all the time. Build a fire just like we talked about. Have the igniter and all ready, try and keep it dry, put something over it, but have it to where you can easily go and ignite it in case you hear planes, see a boat, or something like that, to where you can signal out to them. And this is how to use the fire for signaling."