[pct-l] Fires

[Drew Smith]

Thanks, this is helpful.
I don't doubt the good intentions of those railing against campfires and
alcohol stoves. I've hiked through all the burn areas in the SoCal PCT and
it sucks and is gut-wrenching to see beautiful landscapes turned into
Mordor scenes.

But I've also been backpacking for 50 years now and have used every kind of
stove there is. White gas stoves - which are pressurized, and usually
require priming with a cup of gas that can easily overflow - scare me way
more than alcohol stoves. Upright canister stoves are inherently unstable
and scare me too.

A far better approach than creating an evidence-free fatwa against alcohol
stoves is to insist that everyone clear out a 2-3 ft radius of flammable
material from their stove. This rule is far more logical, enforceable and
effective than trying to parse minute differences in danger from different
stove types.

Drew

On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 10:23 AM Brick Robbins <brick at brickrobbins.com>
wrote:

> On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 7:24 AM, Drew Smith <jdrewsmith at gmail.com> wrote:
> > No question that there have been many fires in CA over the last decade.
> But
> > before sending down commandments from on high, how about a little data to
> > inform the conversation?
>
>
>
> "According to state statistics from 2013, the latest available, the
> most common cause of wildfires is stray flames from debris burning, at
> 14 percent. Vehicle sparks ignited roughly 9 percent of fires that
> year, as did power lines, and were followed by lawn mowers and other
> equipment (8 percent), lightning (7 percent) and arson (6 percent)."
>
> In this article all the "caused by campfire" wildfires - were caused by
> hunters.
>
>
> http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/From-lighting-to-foul-play-what-causes-6511859.php
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