Campfire Craft in BC — Legal, Wet-Weather and Lifesaving

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Skills · Bans · Wet wood · Extinguishing

Fire is warmth, dry socks, boiled water, signal and morale. It is also how 2,000 square kilometres of British Columbia burns in a bad August. Learn the craft; obey the ban.

Updated 2026-09-27 · Official figures verified 2026-08-04 · Educational reference, not a substitute for certified training

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Legal first — this part is not advisory

Before you strike anything, check whether open fire is prohibited where you are going. Prohibitions are set by fire centre — Coastal, Kamloops, Southeast, Cariboo, Prince George, Northwest — and they change through the season with drought conditions. Check the current BC fire bans and the live fire map the morning you leave, not the week before.

The categories mean specific things:

Individual parks and municipalities can also ban fires when the province has not, and BC Parks campgrounds sometimes prohibit fire in specific loops year-round. The kiosk board at your loop overrides everything on this page.

When a ban is on, the answer is a stove. Most bans still permit CSA- or ULC-rated appliances that burn gas, propane or briquettes with a flame controllable by a valve — but confirm, because a total campfire ban sometimes extends to charcoal and portable fire pits.

Where the fire goes

In a BC Parks campground, use the metal ring provided and nothing else. Building a new ring is a rule violation and leaves a scar that outlives you.

In the backcountry, where legal:

1. Choose mineral soil, sand or gravel — never on duff, peat, moss or root mats. Coastal forest soil is largely organic and will carry fire sideways underground for days, then surface metres away.
2. Clear a 1 m radius down to bare dirt.
3. Keep the fire small — under 0.5 m high and wide to stay inside the Category 1 definition.
4. Never build against a boulder or a cliff face: the soot is permanent, and heat spalls rock.
5. Have 8 litres of water and a shovel or hand tool at the fire before you light it. In BC this is a legal requirement for a person lighting or maintaining an open fire, not a nicety.
6. Never leave it unattended for even a minute. A responsible adult must be present until it is out.

The heat ladder — the only fire-building model worth learning

Fire is not a thing you light; it is a sequence of sizes, each igniting the next. Skip a rung and it dies.

1. Tinder — takes a spark

• Western red cedar bark, shredded between your palms until fibrous. The single best natural tinder on the BC coast, and it works damp.
• Birch bark — the papery outer layer only, peeled from fallen birch. Burns oily even when wet. Never strip live trees; it can kill them and, in a park, it is illegal.
• Old man's beard lichen, dry, from dead branches.
• Fatwood — resin-saturated heartwood from the base of dead conifer stumps and branch knots. It shaves into curls that light in rain and it is the answer to a coastal November.
• Manufactured: cotton wool with petroleum jelly in a film canister, waxed cardboard, commercial cubes. Weightless, cheap, keep them in a dry bag.

2. Kindling — matchstick to pencil to thumb

Take dead branches still attached to standing dead trees, at chest height. Wood on the ground has spent the night absorbing the coast. The snap test: dry wood snaps crisply, wet wood bends and tears.

3. Fuel — thumb to wrist to forearm

Add only after a stable bed of coals exists. Piling a wrist-thick log onto flame is the most common way beginners smother their own fire.

Structure

• Teepee — fastest ignition, burns hot and quick, best for starting.
• Log cabin — stable, self-feeding, best for cooking once coals exist.
• Lean-to — a large log as a windbreak with kindling leaning against it, for wind or a fire you must start in a breeze.
• Upside-down / top-down — biggest fuel on the bottom, tinder on top; burns downward, needs no tending for an hour. Underrated for a rainy evening.

Wet-wood technique — the actual BC skill

Anyone can light a fire in Kamloops in July. The skill that matters here is coastal: everything soaked, everything mossy, drizzle at 6°C.

• Split everything. Rain wets the outside of a round. The heart of a split log is dry. A small folding saw and a light axe or a knife you can baton turn wet rounds into dry fuel; without them you are gathering sponges.
• Feather sticks. Take a split, dry-hearted stick, and shave long curls that stay attached at the base. Three good feather sticks will carry a fire from a single spark. This is the technique to practise in the yard before the trip.
• Fatwood. Look at the base of dead conifers and at the knots where branches met the trunk. Amber, heavy, strongly resinous. Shavings ignite from a ferro rod even soaked.
• Build a platform. Lay a base of finger-thick sticks or a slab of bark so your tinder is not sitting in cold mud pulling heat out of the fire.
• Build a drying rack. Once you have flame, lean the next hour's wood around the fire at a distance. A fire that is not simultaneously drying its next meal will fail.
• Carry redundancy. A stormproof lighter, a ferro rod, and matches in a waterproof case. A ferro rod works wet, works cold, works at altitude and does not run out of butane at 3°C — but it needs fine, dry tinder, so it is a system, not a magic wand.

Putting it dead out — the part that ends up in court

More escaped fires in BC come from bad extinguishing than from bad lighting. A fire left "basically out" at 11 pm can be an open flame at 2 am when the wind comes up.

1. Stop feeding it at least 45 minutes before you plan to leave or sleep. Let the fuel burn down to coals.
2. Drown it. Pour water over everything, generously. Sizzling is not the end signal.
3. Stir. Use a stick or shovel to turn every piece, exposing unburned faces and embers underneath.
4. Drown again. Repeat drown-stir-drown until there is no hiss, no steam and no glow.
5. Feel it with the back of your hand, held just above the ash and then touching it. If it is too hot to touch, it is too hot to leave. No exceptions and no "we're only going for a swim."
6. If you are short of water, use dirt — but mix it thoroughly, do not just bury the coals. Buried coals insulate and can smoulder for days.

Scatter cold ash only where the park permits it. In a campground, leave the ash in the ring for the operator.

Reporting a fire

If you see smoke or flame that is not a managed campfire, report it. 1-800-663-5555, or *5555 from a cell. Give the location as precisely as you can — road name and kilometre marker, GPS coordinates from your phone's compass app, or a landmark and a bearing.

The BC Wildfire information line is 1-888-336-7378. Burn registration is 1-888-797-1717.

Frequently asked questions

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Not legal or medical advice. Current regulations, park signage and professional training override this page. Emergency 911 · RAPP wildlife line 1-877-952-7277 · Report a wildfire 1-800-663-5555. Updated 2026-09-27.