Wednesday, March 11, 2009

What do you do when your tent catches on fire?

This is why those Canadian Indians park their snowmobiles so far away from their tents - so they'll at least have transportation if they lose their shelter.

If this had been a nylon tent, it would have turned to napalm and I'd likely be in the burn unit for skin grafts. 

If it had been an untreated canvas tent, it probably would have gone up with a whoosh. Not as bad as nylon, but it's still a thin, flammable sheet, largely vertical, with oxygen on both sides.

Since it was a canvas tent treated for flame resistance, I took it back to Peter at Tentsmiths.com, and he made it better than new.

I had just lit a fire in the stove - it wasn't very hot yet - and happened to notice a flame where the pipe goes through the stove gasket. I closed the damper of the stove but the flame continued to spread around the pipe before I could put it out . I think that whatever adhesive was used to attach the silicone gasket to the fiberglass panel is the culprit. It's being returned to the manufacturer so they can have a look at it.

No harm done other than a charred stove gasket and some yellow smoke discoloration to the roof panel above. 







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