SC - fire safety

[Stefan li Rous]

Lainie said:
> Here's a little bit of what he sent me:
> 
> > Here's a lovely statistic for you. At around only 1 percent of the air
> > in the tent, carbon monoxide will cause immediate unconsciousness and
> > then death within three minutes. It's also one and a half times as dense
> > as air.  At one tenth of one percent, you will pass out after an hour.
> > At roughly the same percentages, hydrogen chloride and hydrogen cyanide
> > will kill you. Hydrogen chloride is produced by burning plastics, such
> > as PVC (such a rare thing in the SCA), and hydrogen cyanide is produced
> > from burning _wool_, nylon, polyurethane foam, rubber and paper. Burning
> > PVC is pungent and irratible, and a person might leave if their awake.
> > Unless they are aware of why the inside of the tent smells of burn
> > almonds.....

Fire, like any tool, can be misused. The trick is to know what is safe
and what is not. No reason to panic, but no reason to be ignorant, either.
 
> If y'all are interested I cal send you the whole post on the subject.
> We're thinking of writing an article together on the issue...

I would be willing to consider such an article for the Florilegium. I
can't force people to read such a thing, but I can make it easily 
available to those who would like to arm themselves with knowledge.

Once again, I will highlight this file in the PENNSIC section of my
Florilegium. Recently, I added the full version which includes the
cute graphics by Master Blackfox.
Fire-Book-art    (739K) 12/28/00    Baron Durr's Guide to Safe Fire Use.
Fire-Book-no-pics (23K)  1/12/96    Baron Durr's Guide to Safe Fire Use. (with
                                       pictures removed for easy file transfer.)

Even though I spent over eleven years in the Boy Scouts and as a Scout
leader, I still found things in this article which were new to me. Please
read it and point others to it.
- -- 
THLord  Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas         stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****