Practice good fire safety habits.
Follow these tips to protect you and your family when in the kitchen. Whether stirring up a quick dinner or creating a masterpiece four-course meal, here’s a recipe for safer cooking you need to use daily.
The safest way to put out a grease fire in a pan on the stove is to smother it.
Never throw water onto an oil or grease fire. The water is heavier than the oil and instantly sinks to the bottom of the pan, where it gets superheated and instantly turns to steam. The steam escapes by exploding up and out, carrying flaming oil with it.
In a demonstration in an open field with a deep fat fryer and 8 ounces of water, an instructor would don a fire suit and use a 10-foot pole to dump 8 ounces of water into the fryer of oil. The resulting explosion became a thirty-foot-high fireball that resembled a nuclear blast. In a kitchen, the fire can hit the ceiling and fill the entire room.
Do not throw sugar or flour on a grease fire. One cup of either creates the explosive force of two sticks of dynamite.
The outbreak of an uncontrolled fire is a danger that threatens not only valuable property, but also human lives.