Why isn’t fire caused by cigarette a more common occurence amongst populated areas?
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Have cigarette companies put any effort into the design of their cigarettes in order to cease burning? Will contact with the filter retard burning?
With all the many pipers out there, smoking packs a day- and throwing them into piles of mulch and dry grass, one would think that the outbreak of a fire would be far more common than it really is. (unless statistics prove otherwise)
What is happening?
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I posed the opposite question here before.
How do any fires get started by stray cigarettes?
It sounds like a stupid question until you have some experience in the matter. As a former teenage smoker, I tried to light damn near everything from newspaper, to straw, campfires, and even buckets of gasoline. None of them would ever light (I am told you can get the gasoline to light under certain conditions so don’t try it). I made bets with people that they couldn’t light something that seemed easy and they lost every time.
I suspect that many wildfires are attributed to cigarettes just because they don’t have any better ideas and it sounds plausible.
Someone did explain how bedding and sofas can catch on fire with cigarettes. It starts a smolder that builds until it ignites. That doesn’t work as well with other mediums.
My brother is a technical specialist with the fire brigade. He says that even under ideal laboratory conditions it is difficult to start a grass or forest fire with a discarded cigarette. The majority of fires caused by cigarettes are in homes and business premises. Most cigarettes that start bushfires have been rigged to deliberately start the fire.
It is refreshing to hear that from an expert. I have tried to reconcile what it is always reported by the media with my own experiments and I can’t do it. Believe me, I TRIED. Cigarettes simply aren’t hot enough to ignite anything that isn’t ideal for setting off a chain-reaction smolder unless it is something like stuffing in furniture or maybe a big pile of lint, or magnesium shavings. Cigarettes will simply go out if you throw them in a pool of gasoline, paint, diesel fuel, kerosene, paint thinner (don’t try it, I already verified it). You can’t start a campfire with one with common natural materials. I dare anyone to try. These fires are starting some other way I tell ya.
One of the worst fires in BC history. Started by a casually discarded cigarette. I got to spend about a month listening to people frantically report this fire, as I worked at the call centre that was taking BC’s forest fire calls at the time. In September of that year I got to travel through the region on a bus. The devastation was amazing. Blackened trees all the way from Kamloops to Clearwater. So please don’t start casually discarding butts just because your brother says it isn’t likely to cause a fire!
One thing I want to know is how could they possibly tell whether a forest fire was started by a cigarette anyway?
The reason cigs don’t go out when you put them down is because the makers don’t want them to - if it burns up in the ashtray, you’ll light another one! I used to smoke Mores when I was bartending because they would go out - I got tired of burning up two packs of cigs a night when I didn’t smoke half a pack.
Whether or not cigs actually do start fires, please don’t just throw them out anywhere. Littering is a nasty habit. My Jeep is usually a wreck inside because I’m not going to throw trash out on the road. Cigarrette butts are trash. Don’t throw them out.
You need to remember that there are a LOT of discarded cigarettes out there.
So even if it is very difficult for a cigarette to start a fire, to the point of nearly impossible to do deliberately with only a few tries, there are enough burning butts out there that a few of them are going to start fires.
My husband flipped a cigarette into our burn pile outside and then went to the hardware store. He returned to a raging fire a half hour later. The pile was twigs and such. It happens!!!
Interesting. I’ve tried it myself, although not the gasoline, and never had a problem lighting up newspaper and straw. Campfires didn’t work, though - they’re even hard to do with a match unless you have something extremely flammable.
Are you talking actual flames or just a smolder followed by nothing? If don’t smoke anymore but I tried to light newspapers all the time in the break room where I worked after school. I even got other smokers to join in. Nothing except some big singe holes in the newspaper.
How did you do it?
Shagnasty
Did you try gently bloqing on the cig and news paper? If something is smoldering and a little breeze gets a good supply of oxygen to the coals they can get hot enough to get a real fire going.
blowing not bloqing
I tried everything I could think of. I think it is time for a Smoker-Doper challenge. Grab a cig and your choice of newspapers, straw, paper towels, napkins etc. Use only the cigarette to light the medium on fire such that there are flames and that object can pass flames on to light other things. You can crumple it, blow on it, etc.
It sounds easy. Give it a try and report back.
Shagnasty, I’m with you. Even when you’re trying to deliberately start a fire, in a fireplace, with matches and something combustible, you sort of have to know what you’re doing. Here’s an analogous thing I’ve wondered: how on earth do electrical fires get started? Yeah, I know, wires get hot, or there’s arcing, but still – if the wires are heating up, usually the breaker or fuse will get tripped, and if there’s arcing, it’s usually in a metal box with nothing combustible around. I don’t dispute that electrical fires actually do happen, but I do feel like electricity is unfairly blamed by fire investigators when they can’t find any other cause.
Sorry, bit of a hijack there.
I don’t really know about fire investigators’ scapegoating habits – for all I know you’re right-- but electrical fires can happen.
In most cases, a short circuit just leads to a blown fuse/breaker. That’s what they’re there for. It’s when something is wrong – miswiring, breaker is stuck, whatever – that short circuits cause fire. You notice nobody blames a fire on ‘perfectly functioning wiring’, it’s ‘faulty wiring’.
Dude! If I was a Quercus I’d be paranoid about fires too! 
My county forester/fire ranger says that a cigarette by itself won’t start a fire. But…arsonists often start a cigarette burning, fold it into a book of paper matches, throw it into the woods and drive away. The smoldering cigarette will ignite the matches when the coal gets to the match heads. Result: Wildfire, and the arsonist can be several miles away before the fire is noticed.
How do electrical fires get started? First of all, if conductors are getting hot, then they are not properly sized for the current flowing. Arcing is something we don’t want to see, excepting when switches are opened or closed, and at the brushes on a motor armature.
You’re correct in that properly installed and maintained electrical systems will rarely cause fires. That said, a percentage of the population improperly installs, extends, modifys or otherwise attaches to the electrical wiring in their dwelling, thereby creating unsafe conditions.
There’s an excellent video which I viewed on AFCI - arc fault circuit interrupters, which describes how branch circuits may be damaged and lead to fires. Unfortunately, I can’t find a link to it online.
Some fire investigators do tag electrical when no other cause is evident, and they are in need of further education.
First of all, I have first-hand knowledge of a discarded cigarette (which I thought was out) igniting a nice little blaze in some cedar bark mulch in a flower bed.
I think a cigarette starting a fire depends on what it lands on. Something like dry pine needles or dry scorched grass is going to combust a lot more readily than a lush geen meadow.
I’m pretty sure I can start a campfire with a cigarette, though I haven’t smoked for years, now. As a historical re-enactor, however, I start fires with flint and steel. A spark is made to fall upon a piece of charred cotton cloth, which then smolders. This is placed in a next of nice dry tinder, generally fine natural fibers, and blown upon until it bursts into flame. This is then dropped into some thin dry sticks. And so on.
Any glowing embers will start a fire if there’s a nice flow of air and something dry and combustible.
Fire investigators can find the starting points of many house fires by careful examination of what remains. Most houses aren’t reduced to ashes. They zero in on the most heavily burned areas. If it seems to be a wall and there are wires inside, they might conclude it was an electrical fire. Fuels used by arsonists leave various signature both in burn patterns and chemical traces that can be detected.
Last summer in a rental cottage, smoke began billowing out from behind the fridge on our second day there. It turned out the fridge was plugged into a cheapo surge protector type extension. The breaker didn’t work and the box started to fry. Luckily we were there and got the thing unplugged and out of the cabin before there were any flames. If we had not been there, though, and the cabin had caught fire, I’m pretty sure an investigator could have determined the fire started behind the fridge and the surviving metal remains of the wiring and surge protector would have been pretty good evidence of what had happened.