How can we prevent cooking fires?

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For the majority of people cooking is an essential pastime, it can even be a fun one. You’ll need to cook the dinner every day, a meal on special occasions, and you may even want to cook breakfast. But, it’s a sobering thought to consider the fact that every time you cook you risk having a fire in your home.  Reports suggest that four out of five winter house fires are started by cooking fires. 

In other words, you need to know how to prevent house fires.

While prevention is better than cure, you should also take the time to install fire shutters, equip your home with a fire extinguisher and blanket, and even design an escape route. These will all help should the worst actually happen. 

Appliance Safety

The first thing to get into the habit of doing is cleaning and maintaining your appliances. That means wiping them out after you’ve used them or emptying the toaster crumb tray. Leftover food in these appliances will get hot and is more likely to catch fire than the food you’re trying to cook. 

Alongside this it is imperative that you unplug any appliance when it’s not in use. This will reduce the risk of an electrical surge causing fire issues. If you can’t unplug the appliances, which is true of many ovens, then turn off the main breaker to prevent the electricity from getting to the appliance.

It goes without saying that any appliance which starts to misbehave should be repaired or replaced. 

Smoke Detectors

A smoke detector should be installed on every level of your home. It’s important to have one near the kitchen but not actually in the kitchen. A smoke alarm in the kitchen will go off all the time when you are simply cooking. This is likely to result in you removing the battery and leaving it out, rendering the alarm useless.

A smoke detector situated just outside the kitchen will alert you to an issue but will not be overly sensitive. Ensuring you’re aware if an actual fire starts.

Follow instructions

Your microwave instructions tell you not to put metal in the microwave. There’s a good reason for this, the metal will spark and s likely to set the microwave on fire. 

Whether you’re dealing with the microwave or the gas stove you should follow the instructions in the manual to ensure you don’t accidentally start a cooking fire. 

Don’t Overfill Pans

Pans with oil in are some of the most dangerous items in a kitchen. Overfilling them means that the oil will splatter when it gets hot. This can cause fires to start.

The same is true if you allow grease to buildup on your stove, it will get hot, splatter and potentially start a fire.

Keep Flammable Items Away

Hair, tea towels, and other similar flammable items can easily catch fire in the kitchen. Make sure you keep them all toed back and tucked away to reduce the risk of you starting a fire.

Using a little common sense can go a long way when preventing a cooking fire.

 

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