How do you use Roman candles?

Why do people who use candles start fires in buildings?

• I live in a place where there are buildings made of wood. Very flammable wood. I need to reduce risk and have found that people who use candles do not know how to use them well and I would like the help them not start fires. They don't want to start fires, but often they have not though about the risks. What happens? How can I help them not burn down the buildings? It hasn't happened yet, but having had other buildings I owned caught on fire by people who smoke inside despite their promise not to, and seeing the dangerous ways people use candles, I am concerned about that too. Some visitors like to building candle holders made of wood as a neat craft. These are building burners. They all catch fire. Luckily so far my eyes have been on it. Even worse... the fire in a cabana would likely start a forest fire. This time of year it certainly would. It is dry. And the fire would rage across my neighbors land and for the rest I my life... I would be considered they guy who started the fire... not the guest... It would be my fault because it was one of my guests. How can I help candle users not start a fire? I started by removing candles from the cabanas... But later people will bring their own.

• Answer:

  One reason is plain-and-simple negligence. 'Nuff said. Another: As we have become very sophisticated about fire prevention and containment, one byblow is that fire safety has become less salient in people's minds ... simply because one screwup is unlikely to have devastating consequences. In days of old, a man checking the horses at night would quite naturally bring a burning oil lamp into a wooden barn with a straw-covered wooden floor, that contained (in addition to horses) three tons of dry hay, one ton of straw, and two tons of anthracite coal, in an urban area built up entirely of wooden buildings, many of which had similar barns alongside and large quantities of coal or dry firewood. And that might have been at the fire station! (Firefighters today talk about the station as "the barn". Not so long ago, that was literal.) People were generally acutely aware of the less pleasant possibilities a flaming light source offered. That doesn't mean the occasional epic fail didn't happen (e.g. in Boston, Chicago, Seattle, New York, Pittsburgh ...), along with a whole bunch of daily minor fails, but if people had been as heedless of fire in the nineteenth century as we are now, every American city would have burned to the ground at least five times.  People were aware, because they had to be, and even hopeless drunks often had ingrained reflexes around candles and lamps.  After all, fire response was a dozen volunteers who would get there -- eventually -- with a hand or steam-pump on a carriage drawn by a couple of Percherons. If you were in an urban area.  Outside the urbs, it was you and your neighbours and a bucket brigade. If you had a ready source of water. For us, fire doesn't enter our lives very often (in fact, if your house has electric heat and an electric stove, you can go for years without being near or seeing a flame except on TV), and when it does, it's almost always pleasant and chosen (a barbecue grill, a cozy fireplace).  When we think of candles, we think of romance and relaxation, not fire.  That's nice, and it's nice that technological civilization can bring that relaxed attitude, but it's also dangerous.