Posted on 09/02/2017 8:42:41 PM PDT by rey
I think they meant to say “sleeping on a##es”.
I know that if I slept on ashes, I would keep myself awake all night coughing. Why would anyone be so stupid to sleep on ashes? There’s better ways to stay warm. Building a fire is one of them. Building a shelter to contain your body heat is another way. Going primitive and sleeping on ashes is not a healthy way to go.
What is CDF?
Our colonials during the mini ice age had special bed warming pans in which they put ashes. They also heated bricks then wrapped them in cloth for the same purpose.
You sleep in the ashes because there is no moore fuel for the fire if it were to turn back on you.
Has nobody here seen Jeremiah Johnson with Robert Redford? Am I that old?
Im guessing California Department of Forestry.
I too was on a hotshot crew (Prineville OR, 1982-1984), but very seldom slept inside the burn. We’d generally stay up and working until relieved, then bed down somewhere outside the line.
Jeremiah Johnson was hardly safety conscience. Cal OSHA would of had a field day with that guy. We are talking about CDF. If you ride on the back of the truck, like firemen used to, you will be fired. Recently, firefighters who were overrun by flames had to remove their gloves to deploy their canopies because they couldn’t undo the melting case with their gloves on were cited for violating policy. Seems odd they could sleep on ashes.
I can understand sweeping away ashes to sleep on warm ground, but this person is saying they lay on warm ashes. I have my doubts as they are long on the stories anyway.
That situation is only likely to occur in grassfires. If a forest area had burned out of control to the point that everything has gone cold and all the fuel is gone leaving dry ashes then you arent likely there as there is nothing left to do. In an area that had recently burned that intensely to clear all fuel from the floor and drop the trunks then the ashes are still full of hot embers and there are stumps burning and big beds of coals from burned snag piles. Again, no good reason to be there, ash full of hot embers, and smoke and gasses from fires around you making sleeping unlikely. Where you are likely to be, controlling backfires on the front near fire breaks and such, the ash is mud and the fire is in your face. Out beyond the firebreaks where you may be to put out new fires caused by blown embers there are no beds of ash and you are surrounded by fuel.
...and of course thats if there is a floor for dry ashes to collect. There was a situation where a firestorm blew through a large bog full of conifers burning all the branches off and leaving closely packed scorched trunks standing everywhere. When the wind stopped blowing that intensely the flames had a chance to linger and cause fires out there. There was no ground in the safer area on the way out there. We were walking across a gappy lattice work of roots that suspended the forest over a “bottomless” black quicksand like bog. Couldnt find ashes or lay down if you wanted to.
I got out on relief too. Did they set up a camp in the cold area, or miles off in the woods? I guess I was pretty lucky, we usually found our way out to provided transport and then away from the fire.
Bricks and rocks break toes. Modern homesteaders heat canvas beanbags full of sand and put those in a flannel envelope instead.
The senior guy in the Mann Gulch crew (decades ago) survived by lighting a fire then hunkering down in the burned area he created; most of the others died running.
Yes, and he was burned and spent some serious time in hospital and he did not sleep in the ashes.
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