Christmas was on Sunday and there have been three kitchen fires that made the news, with more that we, the unknowing public, were not aware of. What will it take to get people to understand? I have commented, many times before, that the people who live through these fires have probably not read my articles, but that is not always the case. This time of the year offers more distractions, with the fact that more cooking than usual is taking place.
Why are unattended, cooking-related fires the leading cause across America? The obvious answer is that the three necessary components for a fire to occur are always present: heat, fuel and oxygen; remove any one of the three components and a fire will not occur or will go out. The stovetop or the oven is the primary source of heat, though there are others. Depending on what is being heated will determine the magnitude of the fire problem. In other words, heating a pan of oil on the stove top that overheats will catch fire and easily extend beyond the pan to the cabinets and other combustibles in the vicinity. Cooking oil is not the only fuel that will burn in a kitchen.
Cooking is a full-time job, from the moment that the stove top burner, or the oven is turned on. The human factor is a major contributing factor to a kitchen fire occurring. I have seen or heard, in my fire service career, many reasons why a person’s kitchen caught fire.
Here are a few:
- • I just got off work, wanted a snack before going to bed, so I put something on the stove and fell asleep on the couch
- I forgot that I was cooking and left to go wherever
- The baby was crying
- I got a phone call
- I just went outside for a moment
- I got interested in something on television
- My neighbor stopped by
Whatever the case, unattended cooking accounted for 3.7 out of 10 fires in Chesterfield County in 2010 and I am quite certain that that number has not gone down in 2016.
If cooking is a full-time job, then how do you keep your mind on the task-at-hand? I have reminded you that when you are cooking and must leave the kitchen for a moment to take a large cooking utensil with you. When a fire unit is stopped, anywhere except in the station, the driver has to put down a wheel chock. Many wheel chocks have been forgotten and either left at the scene or run over by the driver. The means of teaching the importance of not forgetting the wheel chock was to make the driver wear a wheel chock around his/her neck, or carry it around for the next few workdays. I became very close with one or two in my early days, but learned not to forget. You don’t have to tie a utensil around your neck, but by carrying a utensil around, you will be reminded that you are cooking, unless you set it down and forget.
People were displaced by the kitchen fires that were spoken about earlier, with some of the occupants having to be transported to the hospital with burn-related injuries. Each of these fires could have been prevented. Our society accepts accidental fires as an unfortunate part of an accepted norm. The point is that something needs to change. People are willing to pay their mistakes away, or to let someone else pay them away. Family and friends come to the rescue. It’s good to have a place to go and even when you do not, the Red Cross comes to the rescue of many. Is it worth the costs? Is it worth the interruption to your family’s lives? I leave you with this; determine to prevent any fire from occurring in your home in 2017, realizing that the kitchen is the most probable place.
