While home-cooked meals taste great, those who aren’t careful in the kitchen are inviting danger to their homes because, in many places, cooking is the leading cause of home fire and home fire injuries. Fortunately, there are many methods of preventing kitchen fires and making your home a safer place for your family. To improve fire safety in your household, follow these tips for safety with kitchen fires.
Safety Tips for Preventing Kitchen Fires
There are several easy steps you can take to prevent kitchen fires from taking place in your home. Here are some of the dos and don’ts to follow so you can eliminate potential fire hazards and risks in your home:
- It doesn’t matter if you have to go to the bathroom or run to the living room to see the most important part of the game; leaving your hot stove and oven unattended is a bad idea. Everyone should always be alert and attentive while cooking, which also means you shouldn’t cook if you’re tired or have consumed alcohol.
- If you have children, ensure they aren’t allowed within a few feet of your stove for safety. Additionally, turn the handles of your pans around so they cannot reach them.
- Don’t throw away grease while it’s hot, as it can cause a fire in the trash can; however, you shouldn’t pour it down the drain either, so wait for it to cool off before disposing of it.
- A clean kitchen is much safer than a dirty one! Clean up any grease, dust, and debris from your cooking appliances, lest they catch fire, and don’t leave anything combustible, such as towels, close to the stovetop.
- Prior to preheating your oven, make sure there is nothing inside of it. Otherwise, it could potentially catch fire.
Kitchen Safety Tips to Follow if There Is a Fire
Even if you take steps to reduce the chances of a kitchen fire, it’s still possible that one may occur due to unforeseen circumstances. Depending on your actions, you can stop the fire, greatly mitigate the damage it causes, or possibly exacerbate the situation and make it worse. If calamity strikes and you’re face-to-face with a kitchen fire, keep these tips in mind.
- In the event there is an oil or grease fire in your kitchen, never douse it with water; that will make it worse. Instead, smother it with a lid to cut off oxygen from the fire.
- Don’t carry pans of burning food elsewhere, even if it’s for a good reason, like dumping it in the sink or outside. Not only will the movement add more oxygen to the flames, but you could seriously injure yourself if the burning contents spill onto your body.
- Should a fire break out inside your oven, turn off the heat source and keep the door closed so that additional oxygen can’t come in. Until the fire goes out, you should keep the oven door shut. Further, a similar methodology should be followed for microwave fires. If possible, unplug the microwave from the kitchen outlet.
- You should always have fire safety equipment on hand to put out the fire, but if you don’t or are unable to extinguish the flames, call 911 and flee outside.