Family Safety Tips: Preventing Kitchen Fires

Your kitchen is the place of highest fire risk in your home, but never fear—kitchen fires are preventable with these family safety tips.

Here are some great safety tips for you and your loved ones - to help make cooking a fun as well as safe experience for everyone:

• Stoves are the #1 fire hazard in the home. So keep it clean . . . and that goes for the hood and the oven, too.

• Don’t leave food cooking on a burner unattended. It may and pose a safety hazard. The biggest fire safety problems occur when frying food. So if you have to leave the room, or even turn your back, turn the heat off.

• Oven mitts, dishtowels, curtains, and more . . . they can all be a safety hazard. So don’t put those combustible items near the stove. They can easily catch fire and spread the flames.

• Don’t wear loose or long-sleeved clothing which could catch fire while cooking. Tie long hair back as well.

• Keep the handles of pots turned into the center of the stove to minimize the risk of knocking them over.

• Don’t overload electrical outlets with too many appliances. This goes for fire safety in the rest of the house, too.

• Put a fire extinguisher in the kitchen away from the stove.

If there is a fire on your stovetop, it is not recommended that you use the fire extinguisher (it’s fine for electrical or other fires, however). The reason being the pan or pot you are cooking in may tip and spray the burning grease.

Instead, for safety’s sake, put on oven mitts and slide a lid or a cookie sheet over the pan to suffocate the flames. Then turn the burner off. And don’t remove the lid, either—because air can get in and re-ignite that fire.

Since the kitchen is the #1 place home fires start—as well as the top source of injuries due to fires, it makes sense to follow family safety tips in the name of prevention.

Eat, drink and be merry . . . but be safe, too!