Fire is perhaps one of the most important aspects of survival. It has many uses from providing heat for warmth and cooking to signalling and boosting morale. Most commercial survival kits generally contain at least two ways to light fires, military ones are known to contain as many as four.
To light and keep a fire going you need three items : Heat, Fuel and Oxygen. Think of these items in terms of a triangle, if you remove one side of the triangle the triangle will collapse and therefore the fire will go out.
As basic kit I recommend :
Strike anywhere matches, not safety matches.
Carry as many as you possibly can, but keep them dry, perhaps in a 35mm film cannister.
Candle stub or night light.
If you light a match, light a candle with it. This saves you some matches.
Cotton Wool.
I have found this to be one of the best tinders available, taking a flame or a spark very easily.
Another option is to take lighters. I personally find these more awkward to use and can be harder to light in certain conditions. However, even when they run out of fuel, they can be used to make a spark.
o More advanced kit could include :
o Flint and Striker
o Magnesium Block fire lighter
o Magnifying glass
o Friction Firelighting set (More on this later in the year.)
As the saying goes, "Fail to prepare, prepare to fail." You must plan and prepare your fire carefully before lighting, how many of us take our Scouts firelighting, show them how to do it correctly, then watch them run around the camp area looking for wood and feeding match after match into a worthless pile of tinder.
Fuel should be graduated into piles from kindling through to main fuel and logs. Tinder should be dry and as fine as you can get it, hence my recommendation for Cotton Wool. It could also be Birch bark or dried grasses or leaves. Consider the fluffy downy heads of plants which are available in Autumn as tinder, look at a Thistle plant to see what I mean. Your tinder should be dry and fluffy. If it is not then buff it up by twisting it and rubbing it between your hands. Build it up until you have a nice big fluffy ball of tinder.
Kindling comes next, fine twigs which are thin enough to catch light easily. If there is no kindling available consider shaving pencil thick twigs finely into "fuzz" sticks, these can work just as well.
Now build up from pencil thick twigs to pieces as thick as your grip between thumb and forefinger. This thickness is all that would be required for a quick fire to enable cooking to commence quickly, but for an established camp you will need fuel thicker still. Do not cut this into convenient log sizes, just leave it as a length and end feed it into the fire or lay it across to burn through, let the fire do the work for you. Remember, in Survival you have to watch your calorie expenditure and cutting wood just so it is the right size is pointless.
Once you have prepared your fire, use your match, coal or whatever to light your tinder. Build it up a step at a time if required.
To light your fire, build your smaller fuel into a teepee. Tinder at the bottom, gradually building up to the finger thick fuel. The teepee will enable the fire to burn upward, allowing good draught. Add in the other fuel as the fire gets established. On wet or damp ground, build your fire on a bed of twigs, this will keep the fuel off the ground until it has got going.
Indian Fire
This is for an overnight or semi permanent campsite. Arrange your wood around your fire and end feed it in. If your need extra heat for cooking etc., then push the fuel into the middle of the fire and let it burn up, if you just want to keep the fire going then pull the fuel apart so you are not wasting fuel. Digging a small bowl under the main fire will enable the embers to stay hotter longer.
Star Fire
The star fire is the next extension of the Indian Fire and uses 4 big logs, traditionally at the four points of the compass. The fire is regulated again by moving the logs in and out of the fire.
Altar Fire
On very wet ground or peat ground, you will need to make an altar fire. This is basically a fire that is raised off the floor on a platform. You need to make sure that the platform is lined with a suitable material that will not burn. You need to do this on Peat as you risk setting the ground alight.
Criss-Cross Fire
This fire is best suited to a cooking fire, it burns up quite quickly to leave a good even bed of coals. Look at the illustration below to see how it is constructed. Light a small Indian fire first and then build over the top of this.
Always store some firewood in your shelter, this means even if it rains then you can light a fire. If you cannot find any dry wood, then split some with a hand axe or shave it with a knife, it may be dry underneath. The best form of firewood is standing deadwood.
An easy way to light fuzz sticks is to raise them up slightly and put your candle under the pile. The heat from the candle is constant and will light them, when they start to burn, pull the candle out.
Build a reflector at the back of your fire if possible, you can use this as a rack to dry your wet wood out with.
Do not line the edge of your fire with rocks from a river bed or flint. These have been known to explode when they are heated and can send fragments and hot embers flying in all directions.
If you are going to use flammable liquids or chemicals for lighting fires, do so VERY carefully, many accidents happen this way.
Always take great care when using a fire within a shelter or similar, sparks of loose embers pose a great risk to your health.
This is probably one of the most important thing to do when you have finished with any fire. It has two purposes, one to prevent the fire from causing forest fires or similar and the other is to keep the environment in a good condition.
Make sure you allow the fire to die down and then using a stick pile the embers up. Make a well in the middle. Pour water into this and use the stick to stir in the embers to make a slurry. Watch out for the steam!Your guide to the fire being out is that you should be able to pick up the embers with your hands.
Now in the wilderness, scatter them over a wide area where they will not be seen and remove any unburnt fuel to where you found it. On a commercial camp site dispose of the embers where you are instructed to do so. Never bury the embers, they could cause an underground fire.
Water the ground where you have had your fire and replace any turf you may have cut.
Scott Wiggins - 10th January 1997