Jungle Kitchen Fire

Jungle Kitchen Fire

These events are based on a true story.

In late 1999, whilst away on expedition in Belize with Raleigh International I had the great fortune of spending three weeks trekking around the jungle interior with a group of twelve other 'venturers'. During our time in the jungle we were based in the beautiful Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary. The sanctuary staff had kindly allowed us the use of some of the outbuildings for storage of our gear, and shelter while we slept. These provided us with the basics, a roofed
structure supported by polls on which we could hang our hammocks, some shelves for out kit and a covered fire shelf some distance away where we could do our cooking.

The fire shelf was a brick structure and looked much like a much like a barbecue, it was about 4 feet high and at about the 3 foot level there was a metal tray in which the fire could be built. Slightly above this rested a metal mesh on which pots and pans could be balanced. The whole thing was covered by a metal roof held up by 4 support posts about 8 feet high.

All the ventureres took turns carrying out the daily chores, usually in teams of two. On this occasion morning camp preparation and breakfast had fallen
to Pete and Percy. Morning prep and breakfast was a chore fairly low on everyone's 'favourites' list as it involves getting up earlier than everyone else, getting firewood for the fire shelf, collecting water from the stream, lugging it back to camp and making the breakfast for all twelve hungry people.

That morning I vaguely heard Pete struggling his way out of his hammock and the double thumps as he knocked out his boots to check for 'crawlies' before putting them on. From his mutterings he had obviosluy found something inhabiting his footwear and was delivering a lecture on his lack of desire to share before giving Percy, in the hammock next door, a friendly kick to hurry him along. Percy attempted to return the favour but got tangled in his sleeping bag, the hammock rocked alarmingly and he nearly ended up face first on the dirt floor. Eventually they got themselves sorted out and made their way up to the clearing, which housed the fireshelf and the supplies.

I continued to doze in my hammock, listening to the jungle sounds and gently contemplating getting up, it takes about 45 minutes to get breakfast sorted for everyone so I figured there was no hurry. Twenty minutes later I flipped myself out of my hammock and pulled on my boots (having checked them first!). I grabbed a fresh shirt out of my pack and wandered off downstream to have a wash. On arriving at the normally fast running stream I found that there was very little water flowing, enough to wash with but filling water containers upstream nearer the 'kitchen' was going to be tricky. I finished up and began to wander slowly back, savouring the relaxed start to the day. As I ambled up the path I could hear a number of the others beginningtheir morning rituals.

I neared the clearing and could hear the sounds of industrious activity, taking a seat on a nearby rock I could see Pete scrabbling about in the underbrush looking for a good pot lifting stick,a vital component of breakfast making! I gave him a hand and we started to have a natter. I asked him what was cooking and he told me breakfast would be fried jacks and beans.

Fried jacks are a bit like pancakes but you deep fry them like you would a poppadom, chip or french fry (depending on which part of the world you come from!). The result, if you get them right, is a golden brown puffed up pancake that you can have with sweet or savoury toppings. (If you get them wrong they taste like the oily paper you have your chips wrapped in). 'Jacks' take relatively few ingredients to make and are quick to cook, so are an easy breakfast option when you are trying to feed a lot of people (notwitstanding the onset of coronary heart disease in later life!), the secret is to get the frying oil really hot.

I remember looking over at the fire shelf and noticing the large pan full of cooking oil set off to one side. It had that kind of oily heat haze over the top of it that means its coming up to temperature, the kettle next to it for the all important morning cuppa was starting to spew steam from the spout.

"Where are the beans Pete?", I asked.
"Oh, I'm cooking them in the tins" he replied "They're sitting in the fire."

I remembered having a group discussion at the beginning of the expedition about minimising the washing up by cooking a lot of stuff in the tins or in foil packaging. Foil packs are easy, you just drop them in boiling water, tins are a little trickier. The suggested method was to put a dent in the side of the tin and a small hole in the top, you then put the tin in the fire and wait for either the dent to pop out or the contents to ooze out of the hole. I don't pretend that this method is without its hazards (and I don't recommend trying it either!), but as long as you put the dent and the hole it the tin it does seem to work quite well.

I hadn't seen Percy about so I asked Pete where he was, as I had found earlier the stream near the clearing had all but dried up so Percy had gone on the 'long walk', a hefty hike down to the next stream and about a mile 'round trip. The walk there is pleasant enough but the return trip carrying containers full of water is fairly arduous.

I walked over to the fire shelf to inspect the progress, the kettle was boiling nicely and the oil looked hot enough to put the fried jacks into. I moved the kettle of the shelf and looked for the bean tins, there they were, all 6 of them in a neat line, but something looked a little wrong.

"Pete" I called "the dents have popped out on the cans"

...and there's no holes in the top, I thought to myself,interesting...

"Didn't bother denting them" came the reply..

"Pardon?", I said.

"Didn't bother denting them" said Pete, again.

..oh bugger, I thought.

As tends to be the case in such situations everything came into pin sharp focus. It wasn't quite 'life and death' and there have been scarier moments, but contemplate being 2 feet away from 6 tins of boiling beans that are starting to go oval due to extreme internal pressure, with the nearest water source half a mile away and you'll probably get the idea.

I think the light dawned for Pete at that moment because I saw the look on his face as he started to sprint towards me, stopping to scoop up a spare T-shirt someone had left hanging on a branch. I pulled off my bandanna and started gently pulling the tins from the fire and dropping them over the back of the fireshelf into the soft vegetation. This way we'd be protected by the brick wall if the cans exploded, if not we could recover the tins when they had cooled. Pete had joined me by the time I got to the second can and started doing the same. The cans were roasting hot and swollen, the liquid inside was bubbling and you could almost feel the pressure in the seams. With hindsight it was a dumb move trying to get them out of the fire at all but we were short on food anyway and there weren't exactly any local shops nearby.

A couple of the others came into the clearing as we were going through the process of carefully moving the cans as fast as we could and must have realised what had happened. I think that's why one of us lost concentration. I honestly can't remember which one of us placed the last can on the cold brick of the fire shelf rather than dropping it over the back, but it really doesn't matter, the results would have been the same regardless of the culprit.

I remember hearing the can go down onto the brick and the start of a high pitched squeal as the seams started to give way, I dove for the nearest bush and heard the can go off like a gunshot whilst I was still in the air. Pete yelled as I hit the floor and then I heard him fall. I had ploughed into the bush I'd aimed for and was scrabbling around in a tangle of leaves and twigs, I picked myself up double quick time and legged it over to Pete. He'd fallen backwards and was lying on the floor with his hands over his face, he was still in the process of landing as I got to him and started asking if he was OK, the others had started to run over to us and were shouting and signalling. It turns out Pete was fine, he'd been missed by the flying can and all the boiling beans (which were dripping from the nearby trees), he was going to require a fresh pair of pants, but was otherwise in sound health.

The others were still shouting all at once and I couldn't work out what they were saying, I could hear running feet from the other direction also. Already focusing on sounds from wither side of me I staggered as Pete jumped up, grabbing my arm and and pulling me back towards the fireshelf.

As I turned to face the remains of breakfast I realised what the others had been yelling about. Part of an exploding bean can had shot down into the fire, and thrown a handful of burning sticks up into the air, some of which had landed in the pan of boiling oil which had caught fire and was promising to really go for it unless immediately dealt with. To make matters worse the sticks that had landed in the pan had thrown out some of the oil, which had landed in the fire and now was contributing with some really noxious smoke that made seeing what you were doing really difficult.

Pete was in the process of some seriously quick thinking, he reached for the kettle to wet the T-shirt he'd been using to move the beans so that he could smother the oil fire, which was quickly getting toserious proportions (think really big chip pan).

It was at that point that I realised the sound of running I had heard from the direction of the path was Percy coming back with the water. He must have heard the yelling and shouting and double-timed it back down the track carrying a bucket of water in each hand. As he entered the clearing he was behind the fire shelf (the other side of it to the rest of us) all he could see was a lot of flames, a lot of smoke and Pete, apparently with his arm in the fire. So he did what came naturally, he dropped one bucket and threw the contents of other one into the flames.

Pete was standing between me and the fire shelf and was partially obscuring my view of things, the first I knew of it he turned and dove away from the flames grabbing me on the way down. I saw, in Glorious Technicolor and very slow motion, the stream of water from the bucket come through the smoke and drop into the oil fire.

The next bit was over in seconds but seemed to take longer. The water hit the burning pan of oil and there was a nasty deep hissing noise. Then everything went red as a sodding great ball of fire shot up into the air with an enormous WHOOMP!. My view of Percy, the fireshelf and the roof structure was totally obscured by flame and smoke and then it started raining burning sticks, charred baked beans and hot ash!

Pete and I had hit the floor in a tangle, and everyone else had gone to ground as well. I looked up and saw that the fire had blown itself out, the pans had joined the beans on the floor and the kettle was sitting in a bush about six feet away.

"Bugger me!" said Pete with feeling as he pushed himself up to a sitting position with his arms. "Are you alright?"

"Think so." I replied spiting out grit. "Is everyone OK?" I raised my voice to be heard over the spiting and groaning and mutters of various expletives. No one seemed to be yelling or bleeding excessively so I figured they would be alright, I looked back at the fire shelf and then up at the roof. Tendrils of smoke were starting to rise from on top of the metal sheeting!

"Pete?" I enquired.
"Uh-huh?" came the unenthusiastic reply
"I think the roof's on fire" I said in an even tone.

Pete hauled himself to his feet and gave me a hand to get up from the ground. We took a couple of paces back towards the scene of the disaster and the still burning roof. As we got closer I could see over the top of the fireshelf to the other side where Percy had been standing. Just at that moment I saw him begin to stand up, his attention fixed on the burning debris on the top of the flat metal roof, in his hands was the other full bucket of water. With a mighty heave he sent the contents of the bucket skyward to come down across the roof, his aim was excellent, height and distance judged to within an inch.

I was still contemplating his uncanny accuracy as the water hit the metal, put out the smouldering leaves and moss and rolled on across the roof, collecting the accumulated crap of ages as it surged over the flat surface and shot clear over the far edge, covering myself, Pete and anyone else within range with a collection of soggy muck and ash.

Pete turned to me and grinned an enormous grin through the dirt, water and beans that coated him. "Well" he stated with certainty, "it's not likely to get any worse is it?"

With no further words required we began the 'long walk' to get cleaned up.