Don’t let embarrassment fuel your kitchen fire

It could happen to anyone. It could happen to you.

Kitchen fires can be frightening. They can be costly. And they can be deadly. And they happen all the time.

How often? Fires that begin in the kitchen far outnumber all other kinds of house fires – combined. An average of 429 cooking-related fires are reported every day in this country, according to a comprehensive study by the National Fire Protection Association. That’s more than 150,000 residential fires per year just from cooking. Four hundred people die, and more than 5,000 are injured.

Plus, the financial toll is heavy, to the tune of $835 million in structural damages each year.

All of this damage, destruction and heartbreak comes about because someone spilled grease on the stove and neglected to clean it up. Or placed a potholder too close to a stove flame or heating element. Or put a roast in the oven and then took a nap.

Capt. Garon Mosby, public information officer for the St. Louis Fire Department, said the majority of these fires can be avoided by simply taking care in the kitchen.

“Cook neat. Neat and clean,” he said. If something spills or boils over on the stove, clean it up as soon as you can – and that goes for food inside the oven, too. It doesn’t have to be grease or anything you ordinarily think of as inflammable.

“Everything has an ignition point. Everything, at a certain temperature, will ignite,” Mosby said. Many people believe an object has to touch a flame for it to catch fire, but that is not the case.

“Once the temperature builds, maybe it’s not just what is on your stove (that can catch fire), maybe it’s the plastic on your microwave, maybe it is your cabinetry. It’s not just what is on your stove, a lot of the time it is what is near your stove.”

Another main cause of kitchen fires is unattended cooking. According to Mosby, that is when people “get distracted, leave the home, forget that they are cooking.”

If no one is watching a pot, the liquid in it can cook off and evaporate. What is left behind can catch fire. “And a lot of the time, people think they can get to the store and back in time.”

They can’t.

Whenever you are frying, grilling or broiling food, “stay in the kitchen to attend to it,” Mosby said. And if you are using other methods to cook, be sure to stay at home and check on it regularly. If you are forgetful, set an audible timer to remind yourself to look in on it.

If you do have a minor flare-up in your kitchen, remember that fire needs oxygen to survive, he said. If a fire breaks out in a pan, cover it with a lid to cut off the oxygen, and don’t open it up again until you are certain the flames are out. Turn off the heat under the pan, too, and move the pan off the heating element if you can do so safely.

If the fire is in your oven, do not open the door, Mosby said. That will just let oxygen in and encourage it to grow. Often, simply keeping the oven door closed will be enough to contain and extinguish the flames.

Whatever you do, don’t put water on a grease fire, he said. You know how fire experts always say that water will spread a grease fire? It really will.

Mosby offered other tips for avoiding cooking-related fires. Don’t wear loose clothing while cooking, he said, and don’t drink alcohol.

Many people put out their own kitchen fires by covering a pan with a lid or using a fire extinguisher. But, he said, “if you have any doubt about fighting a fire, leave.”

All too often, Mosby and other firefighters encounter people who were embarrassed to call for help or thought their fire was too small to impose on the fire department.

“We’d rather come out and investigate and make sure it is fully out and fully extinguished than have someone think it is put out,” he said. “No one is going to be upset because we had to do what we are trained to do. We want to come out and make sure that you are OK.”

The firefighters will come and check places where the fire might have spread without your realizing it. If it got to a cabinet, for instance, the embers can be hot enough to catch the wall behind it on fire sometime later, or the ceiling above it.

“Fire likes to grow. If it gets past those cabinets, kitchen fires can quickly turn into house fires,” Mosby said.

The single most important thing you can do to protect yourself is to get smoke detectors and to keep them working, he said. Knowing that you have a potential fire can make all the difference.

“Everything else can be replaced – the kitchen, the home, the block – but we can’t replace the people.”

And don’t forget that kitchen fires can happen to anyone at any time.

“You’d be amazed at what a bag of popcorn can do,” he said.