- a San Francisco firedancing troupe -
Every decent set of safety rules for fire performance says that you should never perform without a fire safety. And they’re right. This means that firedancers need a steady supply of fire safeties. Where do we get them?
We do it ourselves, of course. Every firedancer should also be a competent fire safety. In fact, some dancers (including Mythic Fire’s Kai MacTane) would go so far as to say that you simply aren’t a full-fledged firedancer if you haven’t safetied another performer at least once or twice. Certainly, if you’re hanging out with other firedancers, and someone asks you to safety them, and you say, “I’m sorry, I don’t really know how”... you’ll get some funny looks.
So here’s how to to be a fire safety. There’s a lot more to it than just holding a damp towel and keeping your eyes pointed generally in the direction of the performer.
By the way, there are a variety of people in the firedancing community that spend most or all of their time working as fire safeties. It’s not the most glamorous of jobs, but it’s absolutely vital to the art. We at Mythic Fire would like to take this opportunity to say a gigantic “Thank You!” to everyone who makes fire safety their primary focus.
You can always tell the fire safeties in a firedancing or fire performance situation because they’re the ones carrying damp towels. Those are sort of like the “trademark”. They’re also frequently much more useful than a fire extinguisher. (We’ll discuss fire extinguishers a little later.) So your towel is the primary “basic” starting point.
Your towel should be damp, but not wet or dripping — if there’s too much water on it, the heat of the fire can vaporize some of the water and give you or the performer steam burns (which are even nastier than normal burns). If you wet the towel thoroughly, then wring it out thoroughly until no more water drips off it even when you squeeze it moderately hard, then you should have about the right dampness.
Some groups use a second towel just for damping down, cooling off, and smothering tools after performances. If you have a towel like that, which doesn’t get used on people, you can make it a fair bit wetter — especially if it gets used on every tool after every burn, it’s going to need a good deal of water in it to keep from drying out. But towels for use on people should only be damp. If your group uses two towels like this, you may want to color-code them so everyone knows which one is for people and which one is for equipment.
The towel should also be fairly large — in fact, it’s hard to make the towel too big. A full-size beach towel would be great. You’ll probably want to fold the towel in half to make a double layer, regardless of its size.
You should, ideally, be holding the towel in both hands, ready for action on a moment’s notice. This isn’t always possible, and it actually isn’t always necessary, either. But it is the ideal that you want to shoot for.
As an alternative to a damp towel, you can use Duvetyn. Pronounced “DOO-ve-teen”, this is a cloth that’s specially treated to make it heavily fire retardant. (It’s mostly used in theaters, where it’s also called “commando cloth”.) For fire safety purposes, it’s at least as good as a towel; you can hold a Zippo flame up to it for a boringly long time without even getting the Duvetyn to smolder. Duvetyn should not be washed or dampened; this will simply wash out the fire-retardant treatment, rendering it distressingly flammable. Duvetyn is available by the yard from Bearclaw Manufacturing, which also sells a variety of groovy fire toys.
There’s a whole graduated continuum of things that can go wrong, and a wide variety of proper responses. You certainly don’t want to rush out and smother everything at the first sign of trouble, but you also don’t want to let a real problem go undealt with for any longer than necessary. And different performers have their own preferences about how much they can handle on their own before needing a safety’s intervention. Some performers like to try to swat out a small fire on their own, if possible. And in general, the bigger and more public a performance is, the less the performer wants you to have to intervene and douse something. Exactly when to intervene and when to hold back is something that you’ll have to work out based on the performer, the venue, and the specific situation.
But, no matter what, the primary thing is to stay calm. When someone’s hair is on fire, their natural tendency is to freak out, at least a little bit — even the coolest firedancer will be having a rush of adrenaline at that point. Staying calm, keeping yourself cool and collected, will not only reassure your performer that things are still under control; it will also give him or her a concrete example of collectedness to follow. Your calmness will transmit itself to the firedancer, and everyone will be better able to handle the situation in an effective manner.
Here’s a general rundown on the types of things that can go wrong, and how to best respond to them. Keep in mind, however, that all situations are unique, and you will need to use your own judgement when you’re on the spot and something happens. When all else fails, follow the performer’s lead: if he or she’s saying, “Got it” (or “I’ve got it”), it means the performer really thinks he or she can handle the situation alone. Respect that. Conversely, the word “Safety!” should always get your immediate attention, and all the calm, collected problem-solving alertness you can muster. “Safety” (or just “Ack! Help!”) is the near-universal term in firedancing circles to get a safety’s intervention. (At least in English-speaking firedancing circles... I won’t even speculate what they use in, say, Eastern Europe or Japan.) Note that if your performer says something like “Ack! Help!”, he or she is probably losing quite a bit of composure. This is when your own demeanor needs to be nice and frosty, without being unfriendly.
One of the simplest things that can happen is a “near miss” or a graze — the performer has a minor screw-up that doesn’t actually ignite anything, but causes the performer to wonder if something’s on fire that he or she can’t see (hair on the back of the head, for example). At that point, the performer will be looking at you with question marks all over his or face — she or he may even say, “Am I okay?” Let him or her know. Since the performer’s got fire whirling all around going “Whoosh!” at high volume, you’ll want to speak clearly and somewhat loudly, and you may want to avoid saying “You’re fine,” as that can sometimes be misheard as “You’re on fire.” (Hearing problems can especially be compounded if there’s loud music going on as part of the performance.) Instead, try “You’re good”, “You’re okay”, or some other phrasing. If you have a free hand to give a thumbs-up or an okay circle (with your thumb and forefinger), that can help bring the meaning across.
Naturally, if a performer’s on fire and doesn’t seem to know it, the first thing to do is to let him or her know. Simply saying, “Hey, you’re on fire,” is sufficient, though it’s even more helpful to tell the performer where. Freeing up a hand and pointing to the burning area (on your own body, for clarity) may help, but you may also want to keep your hands on the towel, in preparation for using it. So consider quick, clear phrases like: “Fire on your right thigh”, “Joe! Fire, top of your head”, and so on.
When you tell Joe Performer that he’s on fire, he’ll probably try to fix it on his own at first. But if he looks at it and immediately starts edging — or deliberately walking — towards you, chances are he’s about to call for help. Watch for that, since the faster you can anticipate the need for action, the more quickly you’ll be able to act when the performer does call for it.
One option for a screw-up that you’ll wish you could help with, but can’t, is a tangled pair of poi. Sometimes the poi get wrapped around each other, without hurting the performer. Then he or she’s stuck rattling them around, trying to get them untangled. There’s really not a lot you can do in such a case, except reassure the performer that he or she’s not on fire, if he or she gives you that questioning look. The only other recourse is that the performer may decide that getting the poi untangled is just impossible, and it’s time to abort the performance. Then he or she will ask you to use your towel to smother the wicks.
Finally, there are the disasters that you actually need to act to handle — the one time out of every hundred when your presence as a fire safety is really necessary. These are the times when you truly need to be calm, collected, and cool, while also remaining swift, alert, and efficient.
Since you’re catching the problem nice and early, the towel should suffice and you won’t need the fire extinguisher. Indeed, unless you have a type A or B extinguisher, you don’t want to use it on a human, anyway. (See below for more on fire extinguishers.) So you want to take that towel and put out whatever’s on fire that shouldn’t be. This may simply mean patting out some chest hair, head hair, or trailing bit of clothing such as the hem of a skirt or some frayed cloth. In a case like that, the performer will probably have stopped the poi at his or her sides, waiting until you’ve got the fire out and he or she can continue the performance.
Under even worse conditions, the poi themselves may need to be put out — perhaps a wrap went wrong and they’re hopelessly tangled around a limb. You’re not going to get them untangled without putting them out, and the performance needs to be aborted. Smother the poi, and get them off the performer’s skin as quickly (and gently!) as possible — they will still be hot, even after the fire’s out. You don’t want to simply yank them off the performer’s limb, as they may have charred some of the flesh around them. Even if they weren’t in contact with the skin for long enough to do that, yanking those chains along the skin could cause friction burns, even from the cool parts of the metal. Be kind. In a case like this, burns are almost inevitable — learn how to treat burn injuries, and act accordingly; don’t make the injury worse while putting out the flames.
These aren’t so much “topics that only advanced fire safeties need to worry about”; they’re more like a deeper, richer exploration of the issues involved. Even a first-time fire safety can benefit from reading this section.
When performing fire safety, your primary attention should, of course, be on the performer(s) you’re doing safety for. But that doesn’t mean that you should be target-locked on them, to the exclusion of all else. You should also be lightly scanning the area around, alert for any dangers that might crop up. (Someone getting too close to the performer, a fuel container tipping over, etc.)
Remember that performers are restricted in their perception of the world beyond their wicks. The rushing noise of the fire moving through the air, the light leaving trails on their eyes and casting everything outside thir range into darkness... all this means that you’re probably the person best situated to make sure that no drunk or foolish audience members stray into the performance area, that no performer wanders onto uncertain ground, etc.
Realize that, if you’re in an unstructured situation (as opposed to a planned performance), people who want to know about what’s going will frequently choose you to talk to, since the performer is obviously a little busy... This makes you one of the primary points of contact between the audience and the performers — almost like the performer’s “agent”.
If you can split a little of your attention and politely answer folks’ questions, without endangering the performer by doing so, then it will give people a better impression: your whole group will come across as more friendly and open. However, if the conversation gets to the point where it’s distracting you from your real fire-safety duties, have no fear about politely telling the person, “I’m sorry, I need to pay attention to the performer right now. I’ll be happy to answer your questions after the fire’s over.”
At some point, you may need to safety multiple people at once. Different groups (and individuals) have their own guidelines on what the maximum ratio of safeties to performers should be — some people prefer a safety for every two performers, while others are comfortable with only one safety for every four or five performers. As a fire safety, don’t feel like you have to push yourself, or be macho and safety whatever number of people all decide to light up at once. That’s just doing a massive disservice to the people who are putting their safety in your hands. If you don’t feel that you can competently safety more than, say, three people at once, say so. Any performer worth his or her salt will respect you for it, and would prefer to have a safety who isn’t overworked and overwhelmed.
Probably, you’ll want to work your way up from one, through two and three, eventually to being able to safety four or more performers at once. When safetying multiple people, try to check in on each one at least every two or three seconds. Keep your ears alert for the word “Safety!”. Try to find a position where you can easily reach any performer in under three seconds. (This may not always be possible, but it’s a good goal to shoot for.) You might want to pay more attention to the performers that are further away from you, to compensate for the extra time that will be necessary to reach them.
Some people, rather than time-sharing by checking in with each performer in sequence, prefer to get more of a “gestalt” of the entire group, and then focus on anything that disrupts that overall vibe and rhythm. In essence, they’re scanning for aberrations, for hiccups in the flow of the group’s motion. If this approach works for you, great!
You can only stare at blazing flames whirling through the darkness for so long before you get eyestrain. This isn’t that “I’ve been looking at the monitor for too long” kind of eyestrain; you shouldn’t expect headaches or suchlike. But you will have trails all over your retinas, places where your eyes are covered with those weird yellow-blue glowy colors that have no names from looking at too much bright stuff.
This obscures your vision. It reduces your effectiveness as a fire safety. After ten to fifteen minutes of doing fire safety, you should take a break. Nobody should give you any grief over this, either — doing so would be tantamount to saying, “I want to be guarded by a fire safety who might not be able to see when something goes wrong.” So let people know you need to take a break, swap in another fire safety, and rest your eyes for a few minutes.
As a fire safety, you’re supporting everyone else. And they are putting their bodily safety — possibly even their lives — in your hands. That’s a mark of respect; it not only gives you responsibility, but also some measure of authority. Don’t be shy about using it.
If an audience member wants to chat, feel no hesitation in making your own decision about just how much distraction you can handle. Feel no hesitation about telling that person, “I can’t talk right now; I have to watch these people and make sure they’re safe.” Don’t even feel like you need to make eye contact with the person as you kibitz with them; your eyes need to be on the performers. If the person doesn’t understand that, you or someone else can explain it to them later.
If you need something from a performer, or you need to tell something to a performer, don’t hesitate, don’t be shy; speak up! If someone’s wandering too close to the fuel dump, go ahead and warn them off.
And if you see any other safety issue, speak right up and tell people about it. “Hey, I think we should move the spinning-off area further over that way.” “Look out for that soaking dish; it looks like it’s about to tip over.” “Are those quick-links tightened?” In a fire spinning situation, everyone should be keeping an eye out for safety, but the designated fire safeties have a special position of being alert to all possibilities — even if they’re only on duty for ten minutes at a time, and then someone else rotates in.
And finally, being a fire safety really does mean that someone is placing their well-being into your care. If you’ve just met someone, and they say they’d rather have someone else as their safety, take no offense. Anyone who’s going to do fire has the right to choose whose hands they place their trust in.
There are three major types of fire extinguishers available, coded according to what types of fires they should be used on (and what their extinguishing agent is). They also have numeric ratings that describe just how much fire they can put out. But there are certain aspects that are common to all fire extinguishers.
Regardless of the extinguishing agent, a fire extinguisher is essentially a tank full of pressurized “stuff”, with a valve that allows the “stuff” to be squirted out. Usually it gets squirted through a flexible hose that allows easy aiming; some cheaper models omit the hose and simply have a fixed nozzle at the top, requiring that you move the entire device to aim. The valve is opened by pressing or squeezing a lever at the top of the extinguisher, and that lever has a pin that runs through it to prevent accidental discharge, which must be removed before use. (Sort of like a grenade.)
Assuming you’re using the right type of extinguisher for the kind of fire you’ve got, the operation is basically the same for all models as well. The mnemonic is “PASS”, standing for “Pull, Aim, Squeeze, Sweep”.
This is the “classic” type of fire extinguisher, essentially a distant ancestor of the Super-Soaker. The pressure tank is full of good old water, the first stuff people ever learned to throw on fires to put them out. Of course, that’s really just for fires based on wood, paper, cloth, and the like. You’re honestly not likely to cause such fires in your firedancing activities. If you have spilled fuel that’s on fire — whether on the ground or on a person — water will not put it out; it will simply push the fuel around, generally spreading it out over a greater area and making the fire worse. The Type A will also leave a puddle of water wherever you use it. However, the Type A extinguisher has another benefit: it can be used for crowd control.
If you’re going to be doing any performances in a place that you think might get kind of rowdy — some kind of bacchanalian rite, outdoor rave, or whatnot, where people may be sort of crazy, and/or the venue’s crowd control people, if any, will be in short supply — then you might want to consider that a fire safety shouting “Hey stay away from that!” may not be enough to restrain some people. If you squirt them with a short blast of compressed water, though, you’ll definitely get their attention, and they won’t be able to claim that you hit them with anything potentially dangerous.
These extinguishers use carbon dioxide — the gas that all animals exhale — to put out fires in two ways simultaneously. For one, the CO2 drives away any oxygen the fire might have been using to keep going. Secondly, the CO2 is stored compressed into a liquid state. The rapid decompression as it expands into a gas also cools it down — you’ll see frost forming on the end of the release hose as you use this kind of extinguisher. This means it cools down the fuel that’s feeding the fire, making re-ignition less likely.
Type B extinguishers are intended for use on flammable liquids, such as paint, grease, gasoline, oil, and so on. This includes all the fuels we use in firedancing. If you have a flaming fuel spill, a CO2 extinguisher is just the ticket.
A CO2 extinguisher can be used safely on humans, but only at a distance of five feet or more (let’s call it two meters). Closer than that, and you risk giving the person severe and instant frostbite. This especially should not be used on someone who’s got (or is in the process of acquiring) second- or third-degree burns. A CO2 extinguisher should also not be pointed at anyone’s face, since blasting cold carbon dioxide into someone’s face can not only freeze their eyeballs, it can also suffocate them by pushing all the oxygen away from their nose and mouth.
If you have to, and you’re far enough away, you can use a CO2 extinguisher for crowd control, much like a water extinguisher. People may get a bit more freaked out by cold, noisy gases than by water, however. Type B extinguishers are also useful in that they don’t leave any kind of residue or puddles around to clean up. However, when something’s on fire the post-extinguishing cleanup should not be your primary concern!
These extinguishers use a dry chemical powder that halts the oxidation process of burning. These are safe to use not only on “standard flammables” (wood, paper, cloth) and flammable liquids such as firedancing fuels, but also on electrical fires such as shorted wires, plugged-in kitchen appliances, and so on. You probably wouldn’t want to use it on sensitive electronics such as a computer or CD player — while you’d be in no danger from doing so, the powder gets everywhere and might do irretrievable damage to the device. (Of course, if the device is going to be on fire otherwise, you might as well go for it...)
When I say that the powder gets everywhere, I do mean everywhere. If you have to discharge one of these indoors, realize that you’re going to have to sweep not only every horizontal surface later, but also all the vertical surfaces as well. (Yes, the stuff will stick to the walls — twenty feet away from where you used the extinguisher.) You will also need to evacuate the area immediately, but this will not be a problem, because the substances in dry chem extinguishers are made to incorporate an irritant dust and a nuisance dust, specifically to get people away from the stuff. (In other words, if the fire wasn’t enough to make everyone want to go outside, the dry chem dust will definitely do the trick.)
Dry chem extinguishers should not be used on people. They’re for property damage only. This limits their use in firedancing circles, unless you expect to set your venues on fire. However, the well-prepared performer should expect even the unexpected. (Clichéd, yeah. But true.)
Dry chem extinguishers do have a few main advantages. One is that they’re ubiquitous. Type A and B extinguishers are getting more and more difficult to find, while dry chems can be picked up at nationwide chain stores such as Home Depot, K-mart and Target, as well as at many hardware stores. Another is that, when you pick up a dry chem extinguisher, you don’t need to worry about what kind of fire you’re about to use it on. As long as you aren’t pointing it at a person, you can just line up on that fire and PASS. Finally, having any extinguisher at all around is generally a good part of satisfying a fire marshal or police officer that stops by your burn site to see what’s going on. Having the extinguisher — even if it’s a small dry chem — makes you look that much more prepared. (So does having an obvious fire safety person.) Showing that you’re responsible, safety-conscious people instead of just a bunch of random pyromaniacs is an important part of gaining and keeping the authorities’ respect.
For completeness’ sake, I’ll mention the two other types of fire extinguishers in existence. You will probably have no need of them. One is the Type D extinguisher, intended for use on flammable metals (magnesium, etc.). They’re often specialized for one particular metal. The other type is the Halon extinguisher which uses a gas that essentially eats oxygen. It’s only effective up to about 5 feet, since the gas dissipates as it gets further out. These are used to protect sensitive electrical equipment, since they (unlike dry chem extinguishers) leave no icky residue on the circuitry.
Neither of these extinguishers is likely to be of any use to you, unless you plan to firedance in some very odd locations or use some truly strange materials. They’re also nearly impossible to find.
You’ll note that none of these extinguishers are particularly good to use on the situation you’re most likely to encounter: a performer with his or her hair on fire. A water extinguisher may be your best bet there — if the fire is all just hair, and there’s no fuel involved. You don’t want to use CO2 on someone’s head, and Type ABC is totally out of the question.
Even if the fire is a fuel spill on someone’s leg — maybe a screw-up when trying to do the Ring of Fire or Highway to Hell, with over-soaked wicks leaving a flaming puddle on the performer’s thigh — the only thing you could really use would be the Type B extinguisher. If you have one; they and Type As are getting harder to find.
This is why the fire safety’s primary tool of choice is still the damp towel. You can target any location with much more precision than with a fire extinguisher; it makes much less noise, commotion, and mess; it can be found anywhere; it costs nearly nothing and is easily re-usable.
So, while having an extinguisher around in case of total catastrophe, or to impress the cops, can be useful, the real action is with the towel. Keep it close. It’s your friend.
Type A and B fire extinguishers come with numeric ratings, indicating how much fire they can put out. Type C doesn’t really get its own rating, because once you remove the electrical power that’s causing ignition, a Type C fire reverts back to Type A or B.
Type A extinguishers have a numeric rating from 1 to 40, representing the number of gallons of water in them. Type ABC extinguishers also get a rating for the “A” part of the extinguisher, representing the number of gallons of water the extinguisher’s agent is equivalent to.
Type B extinguishers get a numerical rating from 1 to 640, and this represents the number of square feet of burning fluid the extinguisher can douse. The same measurement applies to the “B” part of an ABC extinguisher. The rating assumes the extinguisher is used by a random, untrained person; in the hands of a trained firefighter, it’s expected to put out two and a half times as much.
In dry chem extinguishers, the various ratings are spearated by colons. So, an extinguisher rated 3-A is basically a pressurized three-gallon water tank. A 10-B extinguisher has enough carbon dioxide in it to put out ten square feet of burning liquid (or 25 square feet, if used by a pro). One rated 2-A:10-B:C is a dry chem extinguisher, holding enough chemical to equal the firefighting effectiveness of two gallons of water, or enough to put out 10 square feet of burning liquid (25 if used by a pro), and it can be used on electrical fires. An extinguisher rated 10-A:40-B:C would have the equivalent of 10 gallons of water, or be able to douse 40 square feet of flaming liquid (or 100 square feet if used by a pro), and could also be used on electrical fires.
Overseas readers have no doubt noticed that these units are unabashedly Imperial/English and that there are no Metric conversions. This is because I assume that fire extinguishers in other countries follow some more Metric rating system, and so there’d be little point in supplying Metric conversions for a rating system you’ll never have to use. Unfortunately, I’ve had no cause or opportunity to research foreign fire extinguisher ratings, so I can’t supply any information on them. My apologies; you’ll have to look that information up yourselves.