According to a recent article in the Smithsonian magazine, wildfires have already ravaged over 2 million acres of land across America. As a matter of fact, Doyle Rice from USA Today claims that this is ten times the average and is a near record in wildfires of all time. Though these fires have mainly affected the plains states, (they are affecting Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas the worst), these are near drought conditions in some parts of the nation, and it is expected that this could be a very bad year for wildfires.
With this in mind, it is suggested that you take some specific precautions this year as you head out on your camping trips and your family oriented military surplus tent adventures. These precautions aren’t really anything new or sophisticated, they are more common sense that isn’t necessarily common knowledge.

Here are three precautions you can take to ensure that you don’t set the woods afire as you’re camping this year:

1. Take some buckets and fill them with water. It doesn’t take me to tell you that the easiest way to keep a fire at bay is with water does it? So it stands to reason that it will be a good precaution to have five or ten gallons of designated water for putting out your hot coals.
2. Don’t build a fire on a windy day. Again, common sense here. Anything you build a fire with is going to produce ash and hot coals. There is no real way to prevent these things from blowing around and in drought conditions that can quickly equal disaster. Though there are steps you can take to try to prevent this from happening, nothing is foolproof.
3. Dig a good firepit. By a good firepit, I mean one that is lined with rocks. It should be deep and lined completely with rocks and it is best to stay away from sedimentary rocks which have been in water because these can explode when exposed to the heat of a fire.