Emergency Fire Starting Tips (Part I)

I would like to begin my series of lectures with a few quick emergency fire starting tips and procedures. This is mainly because starting and maintaining a fire is one of the most crucial elements to survival in the wilderness. Fire can provide heat, light, and means of cooking and purifying water.

First, some definitions:

1. Coal: This describes the initial flame you start with, often referring to the saw dust you create and ignite when bow drilling or hand drilling (I'll discuss those later in Part II).
2. Coal Extender: This is what you use to keep your coal lit. Good examples you can find include cattail "fluff," fine saw dust, dead wood, or the ground up inside of Tinder Fungus.
   
3. Tinder: This is what you'll light with your coal when you're ready. This can be made out of Cedar bark, or something along those lines.
   
4. Kindling: This is what you'll light with your tinder once it creates a flame. It starts the fire off with smaller wood so that the larger wood can be added later.
   
5. Fire Wood: This is the larger wood you'll need to finish building the fire, and to keep it burning for a long time.
   

Preparation:

• Preparation is not necessarily "everything," but still makes up a good 90% of the "ingredients" for a successful fire. Keep in mind that if you take the time to prepare a fire pit and gather and assemble your wood in advance, even if your first attempts fail, you at least have that part out of the way and nothing to worry about when you are finally successful; not being prepared may cause your fire to die out while gathering and assembling after you've ignited a coal or tinder bundle, leading you to repeat that process once more.

Assembling a Fire Ring/Pit:

• Find an open area, and clear out any debris on the ground, including leaves and plants.
• If you choose to dig out a section of the ground to make a "pit," do so, if not, ignore this step.
• Find fairly large rocks (give or take 1 square foot ideally) and assemble them around the perimeter of your fire ring or pit. This is to stop the fire and/or embers from escaping, and to give a little resistance against the wind.
  
• Prepare a spot for your tinder, and build up your kindling into either a "cabin style" foundation (placing two pieces of wood parallel to one another horizontally, and then two more on top of those vertically, creating a log cabin effect) or in a "tee pee style" foundation (propping the pieces of wood against one another diagonally to create a cone shape or a tee pee effect) inside your ring of rocks.
  
• Continue the same pattern you have chosen (either the "cabin" or "tee pee") with your fire wood and larger sticks also inside the ring of rocks.
• Make sure you construct these foundations sturdy enough, but also keep them spaced apart enough so that the fire can "breathe" (the fire needs oxygen to burn, and a little room between your kindling will help fuel the fire).
  

Items Necessary or Useful When Starting an Emergency Fire:

• Lighter (anything from a Zippo to a cheap Bic)
• Matches (preferably waterproof)
• Magnesium Fire Starter (make sure you have a steel knife too)
• Swedish Fire Starter
  
• Steel Wool and a 9Volt Battery
  
• Cotton Balls and Vaseline or an Alcohol Based Hand Sanitizer
  

*Make sure you read the instructions of how to use these items, most of which can be purchased at a local outdoors store or WalMart.

Fire starting tips and instructions:

• Steel Wool and 9V Battery:

1. Use a piece of steel wool and place it somewhere safe, near to where you want to start the fire but away from other flammable items.
2. Place both ends of the 9V battery on the piece of steel wool, and the electricity should create the heat required to turn the steel wool into a coal.
3. Blow onto the steel wool, providing your fire with air to extend the coal.
4. You should have a large enough coal to start your fire, just be careful when moving the steel wool.
5. Enjoy your fire that only takes under a minute to start! Just make sure that don't leave it unattended!

• Cotton Balls and Vaseline/Hand Sanitizer

1. Take your cotton balls and coat the outsides with a layer of Vaseline or an alcohol based hand sanitizer.
2. Using your finger nails, pull apart the cotton ball to make a slight opening (so that the part opened doesn't contain any Vaseline or hand sanitizer)
3. Using a lighter, match, or magnesium/Swedish fire starter, ignite the opened part of the cotton ball.
4. The cotton ball should catch and then slowly burn (as the Vaseline/hand sanitizer acts as a candle to keep it lit for much longer)
5. Use the cotton ball to start your fire, but no need to rush as it will burn for a while! Just keep an eye on it and make sure you keep your fire attended at all times!

Safety Tips:

• As I have stressed before, which is often stressed by anyone discussing fire safety, NEVER LEAVE YOUR FIRE UNATTENDED. Of course, in the wilderness when one's surviving, it is sometimes necessary to slightly ignore this rule in order to maximize daylight use and to complete numerous tasks at once, but one should never venture further than they can see from the fire.
• Be cautious as to where you build the fire. Make sure you clear out other flammable materials that may catch easily, including dry plant roots scattered through the ground. Even after building a fire pit, if dry roots exist under the rocks you have built around the fire, the flame can simply spread under the "barrier" of rocks (coming from first experience).
• When building a fire inside a shelter, ventilation is the key. One must make sure to have enough ventilation to allow oxygen in, for both the fire and the occupants. Also be sure to give the smoke somewhere to go, you don't want to smoke yourself out of your own shelter. Obviously, the previous advice to keep flammable materials still apply.
• Always keep sand or water close by to extinguish the fire. It is beautiful and useful in many contexts under the right circumstances, but the dangers are too harsh to ignore. Therefore, don't be ignorant, respect the fury of the flame and use it as safely as possible.

This article is a brief compilation of tips and methods thrown together to give you an understanding of how to start a fire in the wilderness. Knowing this information in advance will help save time when you need to make a fire in an emergency situation. If you do decide to look into fire starting in more depth, there are plenty of resources available containing various methods and other tips not covered here. Also, keep at least two of the materials listed with you at all times while venturing into the outdoors, you never know when you'll need a quick fire, or when your first fire starting item may get lost or ineffective. Be safe and have fun!