What Would You Do?
Fire Safety In the Kitchen

Marge had a tough day at work. She gets home a little later than usual after picking up her two young daughters from school. Her 10-year-old son Zach is already at home. She sends the girls into the living room to play, and starts making dinner, frying hamburgers on the stove. Zach has nearly finished his homework, so she has him help. She assigns him to thawing some frozen Sloppy Joe sauce using the microwave.

“How many minutes?” he asks.

“Let’s do 10 minutes on defrost.” Marge answers.  Zach punches in 10.

Marge quizzes Zach for his spelling test tomorrow. The two little girls start arguing. As their voices get louder, Marge steps into the doorway to tell them to play nice. But the argument has turned into a fight over a toy, and Marge goes into the living room to break it up.

While she’s out of the kitchen, the microwave beeps. Zach takes the dish out of the microwave.  It’s scalding hot because he didn’t hit Defrost before setting it. Zach drops the dish, which falls into the frying pan and spills grease onto the burner. The grease catches fire and smoke billows up, setting off the smoke alarm. Zach doesn’t panic. He’s sure he can handle this. He tries to put out the fire by throwing water on it. The fire quickly spreads.

Marge, still quieting her daughters, hears the smoke alarm. She realizes she’s been out of the kitchen longer than she’d expected, but doesn’t respond to the alarm right away. It’s located very near the kitchen and the family has had nuisance alarms many times before when frying. When she returns to the kitchen she finds Zach trying to put out the fire while flames blacken the ceiling above the stove.

"Get out now!” Marge yells.

Zach remembers the exit routes his family has planned and practiced. He gets down low under the smoke and goes out through the back door. Marge runs to her younger children and hustles them out the front door.  As soon as they are outside they all head straight for their meeting place near the street.

Zach’s father arrives to find his family fleeing their home. He runs inside and searches for the fire extinguisher he bought last year. By the time he finds it at the back of the hall closet, the fire is engulfing the stove area of the kitchen. He has never practiced using the extinguisher, and he discharges it on himself. By now the heat is intense, and the smoke is overwhelming.

Fortunately Marge has a neighbor call 9-1-1 and the fire department response time for their city neighborhood is less than three minutes. The arriving firefighters immediately see the family at the meeting place, and Marge tells them her husband is still inside. The firefighters get him out, and put out the kitchen fire before it can become a building fire.

Did you know?

• Cooking is the leading cause of home fires (41%) and home fire injuries (37%)
• 1 of every 23 households will have a cooking fire this year.
• Unattended cooking is the single leading factor contributing to cooking fires (34%).
• Frying poses the greatest risk of fire (63% of fires).
• Nuisance alarms are the leading reason for disabling smoke alarms, which can leave a household at risk. One study showed a third of households have smoke alarms placed in areas that make nuisance alarms more likely. Know where and how to install your smoke alarms.
• Approximately 20 percent of all meals prepared in U.S. homes involve the use of a microwave.
• Most scalds children experience are from hot foods and liquids spilled in the kitchen or wherever food is cooked and served.
• Whether a child is ready to be given responsibility to use the stove or oven isn't just a question of age.
• Two of every five people injured in home cooking fires (59%) were injured while trying to fight the fire. Here’s what you need to know if you’re going to have a fire extinguisher.