Safety in Camping -- What have you learned the "hard way"?

[rewster79]

Hi folks...

I'm still in the research phase of choosing a camper, and have a couple of general safety questions regarding pop-ups.

My past experience with camping is limited.  Haven't really been at all since my younger "care-free" days when it was me, some buddies, and a good combo of being young-and-invincible (some call it stupid   ) mixed with plenty of liquid courage (12 ounces at a time).  (Yeesh).


Fast forward some years, and my endeavors are now more in line with gearing up for some family camping.  Myself, the wife, and almost-4-year-old son.  Goal is to set ourselves up with a modest rig:  daily driver that can handle a Quicksilver.  We don't have the budget or storage for anything larger, so ultimately I'm trying to determine how feasible it all really is in our situation.

My main question concerns safety considerations and your experience / observations with pop-ups such as the QS.  Maybe I'm a bit paranoid, but one of the main scenarios that pops in my mind when I look at these is falling limbs / trees, as well as lightning storms.  If it were just me, I wouldn't be quite as overly concerned -- but the obligation of keeping my wife and son safe in this endeavor is what has me most discerning of considering every angle before making an investment.  I also admittedly have a bit of a paranoid phobia with the limb factor due to an experience when I was a kid when a large oak limb fell through the roof of my house in the middle of the night, all the way to the floor of the bathroom next to the room where I was sleeping.  Seeing what they can do to a house roof, I can only imagine how that would play out on a canvas-topped pop-up.

Now, I fully get that much of this is attributed to common sense.  Be mindful of setting up underneath large trees / over-hanging limbs.  But considering your rented campsite is only so big, doesn't seem to me like you'll have much choice or room to discern.  In your experience, have you ever seen this as a concern?  Ever seen it happen?  We would mostly lean towards family-friendly campgrounds and car-camping type of environments -- nothing extreme or off the grid.  Do you find that most campgrounds keep an eye on potential hazards like this near the campsites?

And while we're on the subject of the unforeseen wrath of Mother Nature -- how do you handle / react to inevitable lightning storms?  Do you abandon the pop-up and head for your vehicle, or larger building if possible?  Or just ride it out?

Sorry if all this comes off as a bit ridiculous, LOL.  I'm really not a big pansy, but like I said I mostly have security of my family in mind, mixed with a healthy dose of survival instincts.      Also, I know one answer would be "upgrade to something with a hard roof" or "get a trailer camper or RV" -- but like I said, our budget & storage restraints have to remain where they are.  

Thanks in advance for any insight!

[pinstriper]

1) Unless you are dry camping in completely unmanaged space, you are probably restricted to chosen campsites (dry or otherwise). So the ability to say "let's move her 50' and avoid the widowmaker tree limbs" is somewhat limited by praticalities.

2) If a monster tree is going to come down during the night and go through you like a hot knife through butter, it will do so through any RV ever made, whether it be canvas, aluminum, steel, or plywood.

3) Lightening. See (2) above.

4) Item (1) does not apply to military tracked vehicles ie. armored personnel carriers.

5) Probably not (2) or (3) neither.

6) You can't cover all the risks that your imagination can conjure. You CAN control the phenomenon of "don't be stupid in a no-stupid-zone". Unless you're doing something different from everyone else in the campground, you're probably taking no greater risks than anyone else. Bet the field.

[rewster79]

Reading this a day later, I realize how crazy my original post sounds, lol.  I mean, obviously there's risk in anything you do, and I'm definitely not of the mind set that we have to exist in a safety bubble.  Not where I meant to go with that, but now I sound like a lunatic jumping at shadows.     Oh well --- I'll live with that, and refuse to edit my initial ramblings, haha.

I guess what I was really getting at was just trying to learn from others' experience in terms of general safety considerations when you're out there.  

(***Note:  I did make one edit by renaming the thread to "Safety in Camping" in an effort to turn this around and hopefully make it a useful topic.)  


What kind of situations have you learned from, either personally or from witnessing of others while camping, when things "go wrong"?  Is there anything you had never considered until you ran into the situation?  Or learned the hard way through trial & error?  Any good stories of naive newbie camping neighbors that left you shaking your head at something they were doing especially stupid or vastly wrong / unsafe?

[admin]

I can understand the desire to be careful in a relatively new activity. I can assure you that you are going to be safe as long as you do keep a watchful eye on what's above you. I have camped in many state campgrounds that have very 'mature' (I think that's the polite way to say it) trees. Most any campground that is worth your time will be managing the sites to a point that the risk of a falling limb is marginal at best. Barring an act of god I don't think you have any more to worry about while camping than you do just driving down the road. Actually you are probably at a higher risk of a car accident than you are of getting injured in the camper.

In the off chance that you pull up to a site and you see something that is overly concerning you should be able to speak to the campground management to resolve the concern. I think any campground worth their salt would be unwilling to take the liability of placing you in an unsafe site. Plus unless there is absolutely no other room, I would think most places would be ok putting you in a comparable site.

As for lighting or sever weather in general this is something that should be dealt with on a case by case basis. I have weathered many thunderstorms in the pop up with no fear for my safety. Some may not have been planned but none were dangerous enough to make me feel worried. If the storm is so sever that you are concerned about the lighting then there is no shame in riding out the storm in more substantial shelter but your options may be limited. Most of the time you'll be limited to your car, or perhaps the campground bath house. Either of which I would suspect is at the same risk of a lighting strike as the camper.
The only time I've seen a bad storm result in a strike was one trip to the beach. I was in a large RV park with many large units all around me. Since we were at the cost the RVs were all basically the tallest structures around and one poor unlucky soul a couple rows over did get struck. If memory serves it was actually their TV antenna which was struck. No injuries were reported, though they did have some burn marks on the trailer. I say this not to validate the concern but rather to point out that in all my year of camping I've only ever personally seen something like this happen one time. In that one time they were almost asking for it by leaving a lighting rod extended during the storm, and even after the strike the end result was minimal.

I think you will find that with time and experience these concerns will fade. You will be more confident with each trip and in the end you'll find what is within your comfort level. All in all I think it will be better than you expect.

-Sean

[sandyu]

Never brush your teeth in the dark. That tooth paste tube could be baby butt cream. By the way I can verify that stuff is water resistant.

[pjcd]

You know Murphy's law,,,,,,,,"Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value".

[pinstriper]

Watch out for snakes, and bears and gators and fire ants and such. I found a wasp nest on the power pedestal. Spiders too. I found a loose wire in the pole once, could hear the arcing of a very dangerous electrocution hazard.

Theres a whole thread somewhere about camping blunders you should read. Things like chocking wheels.

I travel with the propane off. I turn it off if we leave the campsite.

Watch out for BEARS !!! I SAY AGAIN THERE ARE BEARS !!

[mjmoore17]

I have to agree with pinstriper. I have camped probably a thousand nights in 6 decades. My parents would take us camping all summer since my father was a teacher. The biggest health risks have not been from thunderstorms or lightening but from crawly things and when camping out West, snakes. I had terrible reaction to fire ant bites when waking up in a tent full of them. Poison Ivy is a quick way to instant discomfort.
Most of these issues are fixed with any type of trailer. Propane is a real danger. My brother burned his pop-up tent when being careless with a propane stove. It is always safest to turn off when traveling.
Bears can be a problem but more so out West.
I camp with my almost three year old granddaughter. I feel very strongly that building her relationship with nature ( and her grandfather) is far more important than the rare risks in camping. The biggest risk in camping is probably in the drive to get to nature. Once there you are probably safer.

Michael

[chuck893]

Rewster, I feel you! But I agree with all the others that some things just come under the Stuff Happens umbrella. Absolutely, when you arrive at a campsite, you look around and up. We were tent campers and even backpackers for years so we learned to almost instinctively "read" a site, looking down for anthills and drainages (never camp on an anthill or in a drainage   ) and up for "widowmakers." But you can't always spot everything. There was a case here in Wisconsin in a state park a few years ago where a little girl was killed in her parents' tent when a tree came down. Could they have anticipated it? Maybe, but probably not. The park has a memorial trail in her honor. Stuff happens. You does the best you kin, keep calm and carry on. MJMoore I think has it right: you are more at risk on the road to and from the camp than in camp (but I know you already know that).

My wife and I (both utterly insane) bought our 8.1 in 2010 and beat her half to death over 5 full seasons. In 2014 we were out 99 days, 30 different camps, 16 states, 16,000 miles. We will never do that again, and because of inevitable health issues it looks like our camping days are behind us, but it was great while it lasted. 

I think (think!) that a QS is a Faraday cage, like your car. In a lightning storm you should be reasonably secure in the camper. I admit we have on a couple of occasions fled to the car, and a couple of other times to the shelter or bathroom, but over I-don't-know-how-many fierce storms we mostly stay in the camper, terrified   but warm, dry, and hopefully pretty safe. What scared me more was wind, and Rose (she has a name) has been battered terrifically by windstorms, once so badly that the wind blew the wheel chocks out (!) and shifted her on the pad! I thought the bars would go and the tent over the side but they didn't. Each time I fully expected to find damage in the morning. Each time there was none. Zero. Zilch. The bars did not bend. The canvas held. Even the little Velcro tabs over the door flap were fine, although during a windstorm they rattle like a snare drum. Our experience with our QS 8.1 is that the little camper is tough as nails. We've never had a leak in the original tent. This is all personal and anecdotal of course; results may vary, and if you drop a tree on it, well... But as Pinstriper remarked, if you drop a tree on anything, including a house, well... 

Snakes, wasps, fire ants, gators, bears, ticks, mosquitoes, fire (we had a white gas stove explode once, human error), all those I think are greater camping threats, but they should not deter us any more than they deter us at home. Carry a good first aid kit and stay alert. If you hike, carry enough water and a good water filter if you are going to be on trail for a while (we once ran out of water). Carry enough batteries and flashlights. Stuff like that. I reeeeeaaaalllly wish we could go back to camping with our 4-year-old, who went on to become a backpacker, make Eagle Scout, married, now has our first grandchild, and dang it we can't camp any more.  :-/  

[pjcd]

One story comes to mind, we were camping at Hearth Stone State park at Lake George NY. There was a huge thunder / lightning storm with high winds. Trees came down, but nobody at the campground suffered any damage. We later learned that a couple that was tent camping on one of the islands on the lake had been struck by lightning and killed. I don't think you could prepare for that eventuality.

[pinstriper]

One story comes to mind, we were camping at Hearth Stone State park at Lake George NY. There was a huge thunder / lightning storm with high winds. Trees came down, but nobody at the campground suffered any damage. We later learned that a couple that was tent camping on one of the islands on the lake had been struck by lightning and killed. I don't think you could prepare for that eventuality.

Mmmm, depends on the terrain, where they were camped, how fast the storm moved in.

Thing is, tent camping you aren't going to look to put your tent in a low spot, because of rain and...its a tent. But that's the safest place in a lightening storm.

Neither is high ground particularly favorable, because you are up in the wind. But they may have chosen this anyway, and it would be the worst place to be. High ground on an island ? Bad choice.

In that case, the thing to do is leave your tent, get into the lowest ground you can, and stay low to the ground.

Most people won't know what to do if caught in a lightening storm, or wouldn't think to leave the tent and get soaked so as to not get struck. 

Was there enough time to leave that area ? Were there buildings nearby like a restroom or picnic shelter or maintenance shed ? Even if you couldn't get inside, crouching next to a wall on the leeward side of the building would be safer and the wind being blocked would be the driest place.

Know the forecast, know how to read the skies, have a plan.

[pjcd]

The Tent was on a small island on the lake, the storm moved in around 0100 in the morning and moved rapidly through the area. Lake George is a long narrow lake, towards the middle there are many Islands ranging in size that can accommodate one camper to over a dozen. The only way on or off is by boat.

[uscg]

As I have stated on this forum before, I go to a lot of NASCAR events with my camper.  IF you are ever camping near other people or you yourself are using generators, make sure you are watching the exhaust gases.  Last fall two people were killed about 100 yards from my campsite by carbon monoxide poisoning.  For me, this is the greatest fear I have when camping, so much so that I even use an electric heater at night, rather than my propane heater.  I use the propane if I am awake, but when I get ready for bed, I turn it off and switch to electric.  Yes, I do have a detector in my camper, but still, I have seen it happen in real life so I am scared by that event.

[daplumbr]

While we were out west, a storm passed through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and hit several state parks with high winds and lightning. There was a lot of damage to the campgrounds and several remain closed now, almost 3 weeks later. The Michigan DNR sent out this press release. Note the photo links, but only look at them if you are fearless. And note the text: "......which were occupied at the time."


https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/MIDNR/bulletins/157db51

[johnjd]

I have two stories.
Last year while tent camping in Carlsbad, NM, we returned from visiting the cavern to a heavy rain, lightning, and wind storm. Our tent was bent almost horizontal. My wife and I entered the tent in order to keep the tent from lifting away and keeping the tent in a more vertical position. Probably not too smart as we were under one of the few trees in our area. Guess we were lucky to escape without injuries.
Also, about a decade ago, my sister-in-law's camper (at Jersey shore) was demolished by a small airplane. It was winter time and the campground was closed. Unfortunately the pilot was critically injured.