Serve up Fire Safety

The kitchen is often at the center of family life, but leave your cooking unattended and you could have a serious fire on your hands. Cooking equipment is involved in roughly 150,000 home fires every year. Many of those fires start as a result of people neglecting to monitor their equipment. While a few minutes might not seem like a long time to step away from what’s cooking, that’s all it takes to start a fire that could destroy your home and harm your family. 

The National Fire Protection Association is dedicating Oct. 4-9 to the theme “Serve up Fire Safety in the Kitchen”. During that week, the 21st Civil Engineer Squadron’s Fire Emergency Services personnel will educate children in the community about how kitchen fires can start and how their families can prevent these fires.

A majority of people are choosing to entertain and cook in their homes, making kitchen fire safety more prominent than ever.

According to the National Fire Protection Association, cooking fires continue to be the number one cause of home fires and home injuries, with unattended cooking as the leading cause of cooking fire casualties.

While being alert and attentive is one solution to prevent kitchen fires, fire safety officials also recommend the following safety tips:

• Stay in the kitchen when you are frying, grilling, broiling or boiling food.
• Never cook while sleepy, drinking alcohol or taking medication that makes you drowsy.
• If you must leave the room, turn off the stove.
• When you are simmering, baking or roasting food, check it regularly, stay in the home and use a timer to remind you.
• If you have young children, use the stove’s back burners whenever possible and keep children or pets at least three feet away from the stove.
• Wear clothes with tight fitting sleeves when you cook.
• Keep potholders, oven mitts, wooden utensils, paper and plastic bags, towels and anything else that can burn away from your stovetop.
• Clean up food and grease from burners and stovetops.
• The lower drawer on many new stoves is not for storage, but is actually part of the oven. Be familiar with your appliances!
• Never put water on a grease fire.