Late night question ......

[Robbi]

How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?

 

[welchyd1]

I always liked "only takes one tree to make a thousand matches, only takes one match to burn a thousand trees".

 

[Toddy]

Sod's Law.

Seriously, it covers every eventuality

M

 

[Jared]

Worrying thing is that are probably lots of carelessly disguarded matches, and its just the few that find the perfect conditions.

 

[British Red]

Exactly that Jared. The forest only has to have bad luck once. Bear in mind of course that in many areas, a good fire is needed. I recall torching some pampas grass once....wow! Don't do this if its near your house. 12 foot pillar of flame and burned to an ashy "stump". In the spring it was much healthier and happier. Weird.

 

[Tony]

Yeah, I think forest fires, well any fire really is a real science, we get good at controlled fire, creating our environment so we can predictably create fire, forest have so many variables that there's always going to be ideal conditions just sitting dormant waiting for the catalyst, it's one of the things I think is great about living in the UK, it's actually quite hard to get a forest going in most places, there's always areas that will flash up, but actually getting the trees going is very rare....gorse bushes on the other hand

 

[alpha_centaur]

gorse bushes on the other hand

I remember years ago a mate of mine spending most of a night trying to get a fire going, The wood he was using was green gorse.

No amount of accellerant would get that stuff ablaze.

Dry gorse needles however

 

[crosslandkelly]

Like the old saying, "The more important the need for fire, the harder it is to start one".

 

[Harvestman]

It's a bit like the old "One flap of a butterfly's wing to start a hurricane".

Isn't it more likely that butterflies are powered by hurricanes, rather than the other way around?

 

[WULF]

How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?

never really thought about that robbi but very true........unexplainable

 

[spandit]

Exactly that Jared. The forest only has to have bad luck once. Bear in mind of course that in many areas, a good fire is needed. I recall torching some pampas grass once....wow! Don't do this if its near your house. 12 foot pillar of flame and burned to an ashy "stump". In the spring it was much healthier and happier. Weird.

I think you're supposed to burn pampas to get it to grow well - part of the natural cycle.

If you want to see big flames, trying setting fire to a leylandii - I did once, it was a small tree and it had been raining - might as well have been soaked in petrol
Burning a large pile of bamboo (river cane) produced the thickest smoke I've ever seen but once it started burning properly, sounded like somone burning ammunition, lots of bangs! It's a pity I'm not really supposed to have bonfires here