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wood fires at Arapiles 22-May-2014 At 3:56:38 PM stingray4100

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I was with Fiona and I was in a long sleeved t-shirt when we poured water over this fire. I don't really know the exact time it was and I didn't have a thermometer, but it wasn't 7.7 degrees when the fire was left unattended. I would expect that temperature itself (in the ranges we're talking about here) has less bearing on how a fire spreads anyway - relative humidity is probably more of a factor.

All that aside, are people seriously arguing that an unattended campfire in the gums is OK? Fire wood collection is not allowed in the park, there are no 'constructed' campfire pits in the gums and there is a sign saying no fires. Legal or not, fires shouldn't be left unattended because they can and do get away - I'm sure you wouldn't get any argument from the CFA or DEPI over that statement - in fact it's written on the DEPI website.

Would this fire have gone anywhere? probably not - it wasn't huge, but the fact that a bunch of people arrived after dark and started to break trees, dig a firepit and then disappear to another campsite without putting out their fire, shows that they really didn't care about the legalities and (as evidenced) more than likely didn't put much thought into technicalities such as ambient temperature and fire pit construction.

So we did the right thing and dumped some water on it, and Fiona posted about it to remind people that it's not cool to leave unattended fires in Australia 'cause our bush likes to burn.