Keeping an eye on that stove?
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You might want to take extra care while you're cooking that Tofurkey roast this holiday season.
Vancouver is currently seeing an "alarming upward trend" in kitchen fires. That's according to Vancouver Fire & Rescue Services.
In 2010, there were 163 kitchen fires, representing $1.4 million in losses. That was followed by 228 kitchen blazes, or $2.1 million in losses, in 2011.
This year, firefighters have already responded to 290 kitchen fires, representing $3.2 million in losses, and there's still a few holiday dinners to get through. Apparently, two deaths in 2012 were "directly related to cooking".
Good luck with holiday dinner!
See what happens when water is added to a grease fire.
Comments
1 Comments
A. MacInnis
Dec 25, 2012 at 4:02am
Worst kitchen fire moment:
1. Set an inch of oil on high heat on gas stove, in a small pot with lid on it.
2. Get deeply involved in my email.
3. After about 30 minutes, realize what I have been forgetting.
4. Enter kitchen and TURN OFF HEAT.
5. Contemplate stove nervously.
6. Reason: "if I open that in here, there's going to be smoke everywhere, and the alarms will go off."
7. (Forget entirely: fire feeds on oxygen.)
8. Decide to STICK THE POT OUT THE KITCHEN WINDOW (I lived on the second floor of the building) and OPEN IT OUTSIDE, so the smoke goes outside.
9. Carefully pick up pot with oven mitts on, holding pot out the window with one hand and gripping the lid with the other.
10. Open pot.
11. See pot burst into a huge fireball in my hand, licking my curtains and wooden window-frame!
12. Visualize myself DROPPING the pot, landing on god-knows-what-or-who below.
13. Slam lid BACK ON POT, heart racing.
14. Set pot back on stove (NOT on the burner that it had been on).
15 . Leave it to cool down.
There is a lesson here, beyond the obvious "don't cook when stoned" one.