Royal Army College

Lesson Overview

Heat is one of winter's great comforts and one of its great dangers. A stove or fire warms a chilled body, dries soaked clothing, melts snow into water, cooks hot food, lifts a tired team, and gives light in the long dark. Used carelessly, the same heat kills, by an invisible gas, by fire, and by burns. This lesson sets safety first, because here the dangers must be mastered before the benefits are taken. Its cardinal point, returned to throughout, is the silent killing of carbon monoxide from any heat source in an enclosed space: a tent, a shelter, or a vehicle is no place for a flame or an engine without ventilation. The lesson then teaches winter firecraft step by step, the safe lighting, refuelling, and use of stoves and heaters, fire safety and fuel discipline, the warming of people and kit without harm, and light discipline.

The framing shapes every line. The Royal Kaharagian Army is a small, lightly armed, home-defence force whose work is as likely to be humanitarian as anything else; a member is as apt to light a stove to warm a frozen stranger on a welfare round as to warm their own team on a long task. Cold is beaten not by cleverness or special equipment but by routine and discipline, the same small safe acts done the same way every time until they need no thought. Fire and heat are mastered the same way: by drill, not daring. The one drill this lesson cannot let a member forget is the rule on carbon monoxide.

By the end you will be able to explain the value of heat in winter and its serious dangers, state and apply the rule on carbon monoxide and ventilation, build and tend a winter fire step by step, light, refuel, and use a stove or heater safely, observe fire safety and fuel discipline, warm people and kit without harm, keep light discipline, and apply all of this to the winter welfare operation.

This is the knowledge layer. The lighting and tending of stoves and fires is practical, hazardous work, taught and certified in person under qualified supervision; this lesson teaches the understanding and the safety on which those drills rest. The recognition and treatment of carbon-monoxide poisoning and of cold injury belong to the Combat First Aid course (its lesson on cold, heat, burns, and drowning); here a member learns to recognise the danger and, above all, to prevent it.

Key Terms

Carbon monoxide: an invisible, odourless, tasteless gas given off by any flame, stove, heater, lamp, or running engine; it gives no warning and kills silently, especially in an enclosed space.
Ventilation: a deliberate opening that lets fresh air in and exhaust gases out; mandatory whenever any heat source burns in an enclosed space.
Enclosed space: any space that holds air and warmth rather than letting it pass freely, such as a tent, a shelter, a snow shelter, or the cabin of a vehicle.
Fire lay: the prepared arrangement of tinder, kindling, and fuel, set ready before lighting.
Platform (fire base): a dry layer of wood or stone laid on the snow or wet ground so the fire does not sink into it and drown.
Windbreak and reflector: a barrier set on the windward side of a fire to shield the flame, which also throws heat back toward the user when it stands behind the fire.
Tinder: fine, dry material that catches a spark or flame readily and starts the fire.
Kindling: small dry sticks, graded from matchstick to finger thickness, that carry the flame up from tinder to fuel.
Standing dead wood: dead wood still held off the ground in a bush or tree, which stays drier than wood lying on the wet or snow-covered ground.
Fuel discipline: the careful, sparing, and safe handling, storing, and use of fuel, whether wood or stove fuel.

The value of heat in winter

In the cold, heat does work nothing else can, and naming that work plainly tells a member what is at stake when the rules that follow seem a burden on a freezing night.

It warms a member or a casualty whose own heat is failing. It dries clothing, and Lessons 01 (Cold and the Body) and 02 (Keeping Warm: Clothing, Insulation, and Staying Dry) showed how much depends on dry clothing and dry feet, so a safe means of drying is a means of staying alive. It melts snow and ice into the water a member must not go without; how that is done, and the trap of eating snow for water, belongs to Lesson 05 (Water, Food, and Hygiene in Winter). It gives hot food and a hot drink, which fuel the body's own furnace and warm a person from within better than any amount of huddling. It gives light in the long winter dark, when the day may be short and the work is not. And it lifts morale: a warm, fed, hopeful team works, and a frozen, dispirited one fails.

So heat is precious in winter, and members are tempted to bring it inside, where its dangers are greatest. That is where the discipline of this lesson begins. The more a member wants heat, the more carefully it must be handled, because the wanting is exactly what makes people careless.

Safety first: carbon monoxide, the silent killer

This is the most important passage in the whole course, and it must be learned without compromise. Everything else in this lesson is method; this is the rule that keeps a member alive to use it.

Any stove, heater, fire, lamp, or running engine gives off carbon monoxide, an invisible and odourless gas that kills silently; it must never be used in an enclosed space without ventilation, and a heat source is never used in a sealed space at all.

What it is and why it kills without warning

Carbon monoxide is produced whenever a fuel burns, and in greater amounts when a flame burns poorly, starved of air, as a flame in a closed space soon is. It gives no warning a member can rely on: no smell, no taste; it does not sting the eyes or catch the throat. It works on the blood itself, taking the place of the oxygen the body needs, so a person can be suffocating from within while the air around them still looks and smells like ordinary air.

It dulls the mind, brings on headache and drowsiness, and takes the people breathing it, very often while they sleep, before they understand they are in danger. The body's natural alarms do not fire: no choking reflex wakes a sleeper, no foul smell drives them out. They grow tired, they lie down, and they do not wake. A whole team can be lost together this way, each thinking only that they are cold and weary, which on a winter night is exactly what they expect to feel.

Why the early signs are a trap

The first signs of this gas are the very feelings of a hard cold night: headache, dizziness, nausea, and drowsiness. A member on a long task in the cold is already tired, perhaps headachy from the wind and the effort, longing to sleep. So the warning, when it comes, wears the face of ordinary tiredness, and the natural response, to settle down and rest, is the one response that kills. Worse, the gas clouds the very judgement it would take to recognise the danger, so a poisoned person is the least able of anyone to save themselves. They will not think clearly enough to suspect the stove; they will only feel sleepy, and obey the feeling.

A member must therefore be suspicious of those feelings in any closed space where anything is burning. If more than one person in a tent or shelter feels ill at once, headache, sickness, dizziness, all together, with a stove or heater or lamp alight, that is not coincidence and not mere tiredness; treat it as carbon-monoxide poisoning until proven otherwise. The cure is air, at once, taught below.

Why the snugger the shelter, the greater the danger

The better a tent or shelter holds warmth, the better it holds this gas, so the very snugness a member works for becomes the trap. A draughty, leaky shelter is, for this one danger, a safer one; the well-sealed, well-insulated refuge that finally holds the heat is the one that can also hold the gas to a killing concentration. This is why ventilation feels like throwing warmth away, and why it must be done anyway: the same opening that lets the precious heat leak out lets the poison leak out with it. A member who seals every gap to keep warm has, without knowing it, built a trap.

The same is true of a vehicle: a heater or an engine running in a closed cabin, or an engine running while a vehicle stands in a confined or snow-blocked space, can fill that cabin with the gas. A blocked exhaust, choked by deep snow or a drift built up around a parked vehicle, sends the gas back into the cabin instead of away into the air. Lesson 03 (Shelter from the Cold) makes the same point about heating any closed shelter; it is one rule, met wherever a flame and a roof come together.

The absolute rules

The rules that follow are absolute and have no exceptions. They are few, and a member should know them as well as their own name.

+==========================================================================+
|  CARBON MONOXIDE: THE ABSOLUTE RULES                                      |
|  An invisible, odourless, deadly gas from ANY flame, stove, heater,      |
|  lamp, or engine. It gives no warning. People simply fall asleep         |
|  and die.                                                                 |
|                                                                          |
|   1. KEEP A VENT OPEN AT ALL TIMES whenever anything burns in a tent,    |
|      shelter, snow shelter, or vehicle. Check it stays clear.            |
|                                                                          |
|   2. NEVER run an unvented flame or stove in a closed space.             |
|                                                                          |
|   3. NEVER bring a fire, stove, barbecue, or brazier indoors to keep     |
|      warm. A dying barbecue gives off the most gas of all.               |
|                                                                          |
|   4. NEVER sleep beside a running flame. If a flame must burn while      |
|      anyone rests, ONE person stays awake to watch it and the others.   |
|                                                                          |
|   5. TREAT THE WARNING SIGNS AS AN EMERGENCY. Headache, dizziness,       |
|      nausea, drowsiness in a closed space with anything burning:         |
|      GET INTO FRESH AIR AT ONCE. Then it is a Combat First Aid case.    |
|                                                                          |
|   WHEN IN DOUBT: PUT IT OUT, GET OUT, GET AIR.                           |
+==========================================================================+

A word on each. In a snow shelter the vent must be kept open and checked, because falling or drifting snow can block it through the night and the air goes bad without a sound. A barbecue or brazier carried indoors to warm a space is one of the surest killers there is, because as the coals die down and stop glowing they pour out carbon monoxide while looking nearly out. If a flame must be left burning while anyone sleeps, one person stays awake to watch it and the people, because the moment all are asleep with a flame alight, no one is left to notice the danger. The treatment a member needs to know is short: get the casualty and everyone else out into fresh air at once, leave the burning thing behind, and hand the casualty to first aid. The care of carbon-monoxide poisoning is taught in the Combat First Aid course, but no member waits to act, because here the minutes spent fetching help in bad air are the minutes that kill.

A member who remembers nothing else from this lesson must remember this: warmth indoors without ventilation is not warmth, it is a slow poisoning. Ventilate, always, or do not light it.

Firecraft in winter: building and tending a fire step by step

A fire in winter is harder to start and easier to lose than a summer fire, because everything is cold, wet, and often buried in snow, and the wind that chills a member also strips the heat from a young flame. The skill is not one clever trick but a sequence of unhurried, deliberate steps, each removing one reason a winter fire fails. Learn the sequence, and a fire becomes routine rather than luck. The drill itself is practised and certified in person; what follows is the understanding it rests on.

Step one: a dry platform off the snow

A fire built straight onto snow or sodden ground will sink and drown itself. The heat melts the snow beneath it, the fire settles into the hole it has made, meltwater gathers, and what began as a flame ends as a hiss of steam in a cold puddle. The answer is to lift the fire off the wet ground on a platform, a base of dry material that keeps the burning wood out of the melt.

On snow, lay a platform of wood, green or dead logs and thick branches set side by side like a raft, broad enough to hold the whole fire; if the snow is deep, tread it down hard first or dig down to firmer footing. On wet ground, a layer of stone or a bed of thick dead wood does the same work. The platform need not be elaborate; it need only keep the fire from sitting in water of its own making. Skip this step on snow and a member spends the night nursing a fire that keeps trying to die, and may lose it altogether.

Step two: a windbreak and a reflector

Wind is the enemy of a young fire and of the warmth a finished one gives. A windbreak, a barrier on the windward side, shields the new flame while it is weak and stops the wind scattering the heat. Built well, the same barrier becomes a reflector: a wall of logs, stacked stone, or packed snow set behind the fire throws the heat forward, back toward the user, instead of letting it pour away into the open. A fire in the open warms one side of a person and loses most of its heat to the night; a fire with a reflector behind it and the user between fire and shelter is several times as warming for the same fuel.

So the fire is sited and walled deliberately: a windbreak between the wind and the fire, a reflector behind the fire, and the user, or the wet kit being dried, in the warm pocket between. The figure below shows the arrangement.

   The laid winter fire, sheltered and reflected
   (seen from the side, wind coming from the right)

            wind  >>>>>>
                                  reflector / windbreak
       warm air  ~ ~ ~                (logs, stone, or
         ^   ^   ^                     packed snow wall)
         |   |   |                         |####|
       (   fire   )  <-- heat thrown -->    |####|
       ~~~~~~~~~~~~~      back to user       |####|
   ====================================      |####|
   ||  dry platform of logs / stone  ||  <-- keeps fire off the wet
   ====================================
   ////////////  snow or wet ground  ////////////

   User sits HERE, between the fire and their own shelter,
   in the warm pocket. Wet kit dries at a SAFE distance,
   never hung directly over the flame.

Step three: build small to large, tinder then kindling then fuel

A fire is grown, not lit. A match or a spark cannot set light to a log; it can only set light to something very fine, which sets light to something a little larger, and so on up to the fuel that gives lasting heat. The whole art is in having that graded ladder ready before striking a light.

Tinder is the finest material, dry and fluffy enough to catch a flame instantly: fine dead grass, birch bark, the fluff from dead seed heads, slivers of dry resinous wood, wood shavings, or prepared tinder a member carries. In the wet it must be found or made dry; damp tinder will not light, and keeping it dry is half the battle.
Kindling is the ladder of small sticks that carries the flame from tinder to fuel, graded from matchstick thickness, through pencil and finger thickness, to thumb thickness. It is gathered and sorted into sizes before lighting, so each handful can be added in turn as the fire takes.
Fuel is the substantial wood that gives the lasting heat, from wrist-thick up. It is not put on a young flame, which it would smother, but added once the kindling is burning strongly.

The fire is laid so air can move up through it, for a fire breathes: a small heap or wigwam of kindling built over the tinder, loose enough for air to pass, leaves the flame room to climb. It is lit at the base, on the windward side so the wind drives the flame into the fire rather than away from it, then fed patiently, small to large, never rushed, never choked with a fistful of wet wood at once. Add too much too soon, or wood too large too soon, and the fire is smothered before it is strong; add too little and it starves. The judgement of how fast to feed it is learned by doing, on the ground, under a qualified eye.

Step four: protect the flame from wind and wet

While the flame is young it is fragile, and the winter is trying to put it out. It is sheltered as it is started, in the lee of the windbreak, cupped from the wind by a body or a pack if need be, kept off the wet ground by the platform, and kept dry from above by whatever cover can be rigged. Snow must not be allowed to fall or drip onto it from a branch overhead, so the fire is not sited under a snow-laden bough. Modern means of lighting, matches and a lighter, are simplest and should be carried, kept dry and waterproofed against the day they are needed; the traditional means of making fire exist as a fallback and are practised in person. A member protects the new flame the way they would shelter a small living thing from the weather, because that is very nearly what it is.

Step five: gather the right wood, and keep a dry stock

Where the wood comes from decides whether the fire lights at all. Standing dead wood, dead wood still held up off the ground in a bush or a dead tree, stays far drier than wood lying on the wet, snow-covered ground, which is soaked through and will not burn. So a member gathers dead wood that has not been lying in the wet: the dead lower branches of standing trees, dead standing saplings, wood snapped from a bush rather than picked off the floor. Snow-soaked ground wood is left where it lies. A simple test serves: dry dead wood snaps with a clean crack, while wet or green wood bends and tears.

Because the fire must be kept alive once lit, a member keeps a stock of dry fuel and tinder in hand, more than seems needed, gathered before dark and kept under cover from the snow and rain. A reserve of dry tinder is kept back against the next time, because the hardest fire to light is the one a member must start cold and wet with nothing dry to hand. Wet wood set near the fire dries for later use, but it is the dry stock, gathered in advance, that carries a fire through a long night. Half of winter firecraft is simply having prepared, dry material ready before it is needed, rather than scrambling for it in the dark and the wet when the cold is already biting.

Putting the fire out and leaving no scar

All of this is done responsibly, leaving the ground as it was found. Live, growing trees are not cut; the fire is kept small and contained; and when it is finished it is put out completely, drowned with water or smothered with earth or snow, stirred, and felt cold to the hand, so nothing smoulders and no lasting scar is left. A member takes from the land only what is needed and leaves it clean. A fire left to "burn down on its own" can spread on the wind or smoulder for hours; only a fire drowned, stirred, and felt cold is truly out.

Stoves and heaters: safe lighting, refuelling, and use

For most cold-weather work the stove, not the open fire, is the real means of heat: portable, controllable, fast to boil water, and far better suited to a tent or vehicle than an open flame. But a stove burns fuel, so it produces carbon monoxide, so the whole of the safety rule above applies to it without softening. A stove is a fire in a small metal box, and it deserves the same respect.

Lighting a stove safely

A stove is lit by the proper drill, which a member learns and is certified on in person; the principles behind that drill are these. It is set up on firm, level footing where it will not topple, clear of anything that can burn, and, if it is to be used in any enclosed space, with ventilation established first, before it is lit, not after. It is lit at arm's length, the face and body kept back, because a stove that has been over-primed or has leaked can flare on lighting. The flame is brought up under control and watched until it burns cleanly and steadily; a yellow, sooty, flickering flame signals poor burning and more carbon monoxide, and is corrected or the stove shut down. A stove is never left to light itself unattended, and never lit inside a sleeping bag or under loose clothing.

Refuelling: cold, outside, never near a flame

Refuelling is where stoves most often cause fires and burns, and the rules on it are strict and simple.

   REFUELLING A STOVE: the three rules

   1. COLD     Let the stove COOL before refilling. Never refuel a
               stove that is hot, lit, or just put out: spilled fuel
               on hot metal flashes into flame.

   2. OUTSIDE  Refuel in the OPEN AIR, never inside a tent, shelter,
               or vehicle. Fuel vapour pools, and one spark finds it.

   3. AWAY     Refuel well AWAY from any flame, including any OTHER
               stove still burning nearby. Vapour travels to a flame
               you cannot see.

A stove is refilled cold, outside, and away from any flame, every time. Fuel and its vapour catch fire readily, the vapour travels invisibly to a flame some distance off, and a tent full of fuel vapour is an explosion waiting for a spark. So a member never refills a stove inside a shelter, never refills one still hot or alight, and takes care against spills, wiping up any fuel and letting it dry before lighting. Filling a stove is a deliberate, unhurried job done in the right place, not a quick top-up squeezed in beside a burning flame to save walking out into the cold.

Using a stove or heater in a shelter

If a stove or heater is run inside a tent or shelter at all, it is run under the carbon-monoxide rules in full: ventilation kept open and checked throughout, never left burning unattended, never left burning while everyone sleeps, and shut down rather than left to idle when not needed. A heater that warms a closed shelter through the night is the very situation that kills, and it is treated with the gravest care: a watch kept, the vent kept clear, and at the first sign of headache or sickness in anyone, the heater out and the people into fresh air. The convenience of running a heater all night is never worth a life, and a member who cannot keep a vent open and a watch awake does not run a flame overnight at all.

Fire safety and fuel discipline

Beyond the silent gas, heat brings two plain physical dangers, fire and burns, and the cold-weather setting makes both worse.

Why shelters and kit burn so fast

Tents, shelters, and clothing catch fire with frightening ease, and a fire in a tent on a freezing night, with people inside and bundled in clothing, is a deadly emergency. Synthetic fabrics, the very materials most cold-weather tents, sleeping bags, and clothing are made from, do not merely scorch; they melt and burn fast, flaring up and dripping burning material, so a small flame becomes an engulfed shelter in seconds. A flame set too close to a tent wall, a garment hung over a stove to dry, a stove knocked over, a sleeve brushed across a burner, any of these can set a shelter alight, and a shelter full of sleeping people in bulky clothing is a slow place to escape from. The cold also numbs the hands and dulls the judgement, so burns are taken more easily and noticed too late; a numb hand does not feel the heat harming it until the harm is done.

The rules of fire safety

The rules are therefore strict, and a member keeps them as routine:

Keep flame well clear of fabric and of anything that will burn, and keep a clear space around any stove or heater.
Never hang clothing directly over a stove or flame to dry it; dry it at a safe distance, watched, where it cannot fall onto the heat.
Never leave a flame or a lit stove unattended, even for a moment.
Keep fuel, fuel bottles, and other flammables clear of the heat.
Know, before lighting, how the flame will be put out and how people would get out if the worst happened, so the way out is clear and not blocked by the stove itself.
Keep a means of dousing a fire to hand: water, snow, or earth ready, so a flare-up can be smothered at once.

A stove or heater sited so its only path of escape runs past the flame is sited wrongly; the way out is planned before the flame is lit.

Fuel discipline and the cold-fuel danger

Fuel must be handled with the same discipline. It is precious and often limited, whether wood gathered for a fire or stove fuel carried in, so it is used sparingly and not wasted; a member who burns through the night's fuel by midnight faces a cold dawn. It is also dangerous: fuel and its vapour catch fire readily, so it is stored and handled clear of any flame, with care taken against spills, and a stove is filled and lit by the proper drill, never refilled while hot or alight.

The cold adds a danger of its own that a member must understand. Liquid stove fuel does not freeze at the temperatures that freeze water; it stays liquid in deep cold, and that liquid is then far colder than freezing. Fuel spilled on bare skin in extreme cold can cause instant frostbite, freezing the flesh on contact, before a member even registers the wet. So fuel is handled with gloves on in the cold, with great care against splashes onto bare skin, and a member never warms a fuel bottle against the body or puts cold metal fuel containers against bare hands. A spill of petrol on a warm summer day is a nuisance; the same spill on bare skin in deep winter is a freezing injury. In cold-weather living, careless fuel handling and careless flame are among the surest ways to turn a routine night into a disaster.

Warming people and kit safely

Heat is given to cold people and applied to cold kit to do good, and given wrongly it does harm. The governing principle is gentleness: cold and frozen flesh is fragile, and fierce heat does not rescue it but damages it.

No fierce direct heat on cold or frozen flesh

A deeply chilled or frozen part of the body is not warmed by being thrust at a fire or a heater. Fierce, direct heat on cold flesh can burn skin too numb to feel the burning and too cold to react to it, and rapid, harsh warming of a frozen part can do worse harm than the cold did. The rule is to warm gradually: get the person out of the wind and wet and off the cold ground, into shelter, and warm them steadily, with gentle, even heat, warm dry layers, warm drinks if they can take them safely, and the body's own warmth, rather than roasting a frozen hand at a stove. The temptation, finding someone frozen, is to warm them hard and fast; that temptation is wrong, and resisting it is part of the skill. The recognition and treatment of cold injury, frostbite and hypothermia, belong to the Combat First Aid course; here a member learns the one habit that prevents the commonest harm, never to apply fierce direct heat to cold or frozen flesh.

Drying kit without ruining it or starting a fire

Wet kit is dried by warmth, but at a safe distance and under watch, never hung directly over a flame or stove. Synthetic clothing and sleeping kit will melt and burn against a hot stove, ruining costly equipment and risking a fire, and boots dried too hard at a fierce heat crack and stiffen. So kit is dried gently, in the warm pocket near the fire or in the warmth of a ventilated shelter, turned and watched, kept far enough from the flame that it cannot scorch or fall onto the heat. The same gentle, patient warmth that is right for a cold person is right for cold kit.

Light discipline

Heat sources give light, and light is welcome in the long winter dark, but light is managed deliberately, for three reasons a member holds together. A lamp or flame for light is still a flame: it burns fuel, it produces carbon monoxide, and a lamp burning in a closed tent falls under the very same ventilation rule as a stove. A lamp is not a safe exception to the carbon-monoxide rule, and must never be the thing a member forgets when they ventilate against the stove but leave the lamp burning. Light is also to be husbanded, because batteries fail fast in the cold and fuel is limited, so it is used when needed and not wastefully, and a member keeps the means of light, torch and spare cells, warm and ready. And on some tasks light must be controlled so as not to be seen from afar or spoil a member's night vision; the discipline of when and how light is shown belongs more fully to fieldcraft and patrolling, but a member should already grasp that light, like heat, is used with thought. A flame kept for light is governed by every rule that governs a flame kept for heat.

The welfare application: warmth that helps, and a deadly mistake

On the winter welfare operation, heat is one of the kindest and most useful things a member can offer, and one of the most dangerous if given carelessly. Everything taught above is brought to bear in the service of a frozen stranger.

A hot, sweet drink and gentle warmth are among the best first comforts for a cold person who is alert and able to drink, warming them from within and lifting their spirits. Lessons 01 and 02 set out the cautions: only if they are fully conscious and able to swallow safely, never alcohol, and never fierce direct heat applied to a deeply chilled body. Given with that care, warmth is a real and humane help. The member gets the person out of the wind, off the cold ground, into a ventilated warm place, and warms them steadily, the same gradual warming taught above.

But one mistake on the welfare round can kill, and it follows straight from the safety rule of this lesson. Finding a person frozen, it is natural to want to put them somewhere warm at once, and a member may be tempted to sit a cold person in a car with the engine running and the heater on. This can be deadly. A vehicle standing with its engine running, especially in a confined space or where snow or obstruction blocks the exhaust, can fill its own cabin with carbon monoxide, and the very person being helped, already dulled by the cold and so least able to notice the danger, may be poisoned without a sound. The same invisible gas, the same silent death. Warm a person in a vehicle only with proper care for fresh air, an open window, a clear exhaust, never in a sealed, idling cabin, and never leave a cold person to "warm up" alone in a running vehicle. The knowledge that protects a member in their own tent is the knowledge that keeps the people they help alive.

In Practice: A Stove at the Welfare Post

At a welfare post on a bitter night, set up in a hall lent to the team in a small upland town, a section of the RKA runs a warm point for those who come in from the cold, and the lesson governs every part of it.

The stove that heats the post and boils water for drinks is set up by the drill their instructors certified, on firm footing, clear of anything that can burn, and a window is propped open and a vent kept clear at all times, checked through the night, because they know the gas it gives off has no smell and would take them and their visitors silently in a closed room. When the fuel runs low, a member takes the stove right outside into the snow to refill it, cold and well away from the burner still alight inside, and wipes up a small spill and lets it dry before bringing it back. They keep the fuel bottles clear of the flame, hang the wet coats they take in on a line at a safe distance and never over the stove, watch them, and one of them is always by the stove; none of them sleeps with it alight, and they have agreed who would put it out and how everyone would get out if the worst came.

When a man is helped in, soaked and shivering but alert, they get him out of the wind, off the cold floor onto a mat, give him a warm sweet drink, and warm him gently, not by sitting him hard against the hot stove but with dry blankets and the warmth of the room. One of them notices another visitor, an older woman, slumped and unusually drowsy after twenty minutes near the heater, complaining of a headache, and remembers the lesson: drowsiness and headache by a flame are a warning, not just tiredness. They get her into the fresh air at the door at once, the headache eases in the cold clean air, they prop the window wider and check the vent, and they pass her to the first-aid member to watch, exactly as the Combat First Aid course requires. Later a newer member, seeing a woman too cold to walk in from the car park, suggests warming her in the running van outside; the team leader stops that at once, explaining the danger of the idling cabin and the snow banked against its exhaust, and they bring her into the ventilated post instead.

The stove drill, and the care of cold injury and of the gas, are certified and treated in person and in the first-aid course; that they laid and ran their heat safely, ventilated against the silent gas, refuelled cold and outside, warmed people gently, and caught both the early poisoning and the deadly shortcut before either took a life, belongs to this lesson.

Check Your Understanding

List the ways heat is valuable to a member in winter, and then state the serious dangers that make it something to be handled with discipline. Why does the very thing that makes heat precious also make people careless with it?
State the absolute rules on carbon monoxide that apply whenever any flame, stove, heater, or lamp is used in a tent, shelter, snow shelter, or vehicle. Why are the early warning signs (headache, dizziness, nausea, drowsiness) such a deadly trap on a cold night, why does a snugger shelter make the danger greater, and what does a member do the instant those signs appear?
Build a winter fire step by step: explain the dry platform, the windbreak and reflector, the building of tinder, kindling, and fuel from small to large, the protecting of the young flame, and where the wood is gathered and why a dry stock is kept. Then state the three rules for refuelling a stove, and explain the deadly mistake to avoid when warming a cold person in a vehicle on the winter operation.

Reflection (write a short paragraph): This lesson puts safety before benefit and warns that the silent gas from a heat source is most dangerous in exactly the warm, enclosed places a member most wants to be, and that the early signs of poisoning are the very feelings of a hard cold night. Think about a long, cold night in a tent or shelter with a stove alight, and about helping a frozen person on the winter round. Which safety habit from this lesson, keeping a vent open, never sleeping by a flame, refuelling cold and outside, never warming a person in a sealed idling vehicle, would you want so firmly fixed by routine that you would keep it even when you were exhausted and desperate to be warm, and why might keeping that one habit be the difference between rescue and tragedy?

Summary

Heat is precious in winter, for warming, drying clothing, melting water, hot food and drink, light, and morale; it is also seriously dangerous, and in this subject the dangers must be mastered before the benefits are taken. The more a member wants heat, the more carefully it must be handled.
The cardinal danger is carbon monoxide, an invisible, odourless gas from any flame, stove, heater, lamp, or running engine, which kills silently and gives no warning, its early signs (headache, dizziness, nausea, drowsiness) easily mistaken for cold and tiredness so the victim simply falls asleep and dies. The absolute rules: keep a vent open at all times, never run an unvented flame in a closed space, never bring a fire or barbecue indoors, never sleep beside a running flame, and treat the warning signs as an emergency, get into fresh air at once, then hand to Combat First Aid. The snugger the shelter, the greater the danger.
Build a winter fire by method: a dry platform off the snow so it does not sink and drown; a windbreak and reflector to shield the flame and throw heat back; tinder, then graded kindling, then fuel, built small to large with air to breathe and lit on the windward side; the young flame sheltered from wind and wet; standing dead wood gathered, not snow-soaked ground wood, and a dry stock of fuel and tinder kept in hand. Done responsibly: no live trees cut, the fire kept small, and put out completely, drowned, stirred, and felt cold.
Use stoves and heaters safely: set up firm and clear, ventilation established before lighting, lit at arm's length and watched for a clean flame, never left unattended or burning while all sleep; refuel COLD, OUTSIDE, and AWAY from any flame, every time. Observe fire safety, because synthetic tents and kit burn fast: keep flame clear of fabric and fuel, never dry clothing over a stove, plan the way out, and keep a means to douse to hand. Handle fuel sparingly and with care, knowing that liquid fuel does not freeze and causes instant frostbite on bare skin in deep cold.
Warm people and kit gently, never with fierce direct heat on cold or frozen flesh, which it burns and harms; keep light discipline, remembering a lamp is a flame under the same ventilation rule. For welfare, a hot sweet drink and gentle warmth help a conscious cold person (never alcohol, never fierce heat); and never warm a person in a sealed, idling vehicle, whose engine can fill the cabin with carbon monoxide and kill the very person being helped. The lighting and tending of stoves and fires, and the treatment of cold injury and carbon-monoxide poisoning, are taught and certified in person and in the Combat First Aid course; cross-references run to Lesson 03 (Shelter from the Cold) for ventilation and to Lesson 05 (Water, Food, and Hygiene in Winter) for melting water and cooking.

Fire, Heat, and Light in the Cold