Would this ever happen to you?

We left the lantern on “low” and walked to the washroom one night while camping. On the way back, to our horror, we saw FLAMES SHOOTING INTO THE AIR.

We ran back to camp. Our lantern was on fire. Not just lit, but really on fire. We gingerly moved it off the picnic table and set it on the ground where we thought it was less likely to catch the  world on fire. 

Grabbing a box of baking soda (that we keep for emergencies just like this) we dumped the whole box on the burning lantern. Nothing happened… 

Next we grabbed a rug we use to wipe our feet on in the tent, dunked it in a caldron of water simmering over the campfire and tried to smother the fire with the wet rug… The fire was tougher than we thought and it was a no go. 

WE WERE AFRAID IT WOULD BLOW UP THE BOTTLE OF FUEL ATTACHED TO THE BURNING LANTERN TOP. 

So we did what we didn’t want to do, add water to the fire, but by now we were pretty desperate to stop the flames. We grabbed that caldron of water off the fire and dowsed the rug and burning lantern and “WA-LA” the fire was out. WHEW!

Photo of the fireplace shows the caldron upside down on the right hand side of the fireplace. 

We contacted Coleman and asked what happened? And I quote my sister from our Journal: “They (Coleman) were great about it—had me send the lamp and their engineers took it apart to find the problem.  Found that an insect had climbed into the generating tube, blocking the gas from getting to the mantel and forcing the gas out into the chamber instead.  That is what set the whole thing on fire.  Coleman was very gracious—sent us a new one even though ours was more than 10 years old!” 

What my sister didn’t mention in the Journal is that at one point Coleman “suggested” we should upgrade our equipment because 10 years old is, um, ten years old.

Now you tell me. Do you just go out and buy new equipment just because it’s ten years old? 

When we first started out camping with our children some of our equipment belonged to our Dad and Mom and was over 50 years old. Over the years we bought new equipment because newer was easier/safer like propane instead of liquid fuel, and lightweight tents instead of heavy canvas. But to just go out and replace perfectly good lanterns? We would not have considered that for a moment. 

So to end this story, I will tell you that Coleman replaced our burned lantern and we threw away the other two and replaced them with new. And we now NEVER leave an empty camp with a propane lantern lit. I guess that is a lesson learned the hard way.