Many homeowners don’t realize how important preventing fires in their kitchen is to their families’ safety. According to the report compiled by the U.S. Fire Administration in 2015, cooking was the leading cause of residential fires in the U.S., accounting for 50.8% residential fires between 2006 and 2015.
But does this really surprise anyone? How many times did you accidentally leave the stove on, the grill lit or the gas running next to highly flammable materials like cooking oils?
Even if you make sure no one gets hurt, the aftermath of a kitchen fire may be catastrophic. Depending on the size of the fire, your home insurance may not be able to cover the restoration costs, as reported by KIC Restoration Inc. of San Diego here: http://www.kicrestoration.com/insurance-fire-damage-restoration-san-diego/
Fortunately, there are some steps you can take to prevent a kitchen fire from ever happening. In this article, we are going to give you a few quick and easy prevention tips that can drastically decrease the risk of a kitchen fire breaking out.
Don’t Leave the Kitchen Unattended When Preparing Your Food
This should be common sense for everyone, but sadly many homeowners tend to multitask, leaving the kitchen with the meal boiling, or even worse frying. The easiest and the most obvious way to prevent a kitchen fire is not leave the kitchen unattended with any heating device on, not even for a minute. Have your spouse or other residents take care of setting the table or doing anything outside the kitchen, and keep your attention focused on cooking. If you do have to leave the kitchen, make sure not to leave the stove or oven on.
Remove Any Grease Residue
Grease residue tends to build if you don’t clean your kitchen after cooking. This residue can be particularly dangerous around the cooking equipment like burners or the grill. Whether it’s on the actual equipment, on the ventilation, on the countertop or the backsplash, the residue can easily catch fire if not taken care of.
Apart from making sure you clean the kitchen on a regular basis, you should definitely have professionals deep-clean the exhaust system, so residue does not build up there and catch fire.
Keep the Cooking Equipment at a Distance
The deep fryer is irreplaceable in any kitchen, but this piece of equipment has to be handled properly. Since it uses a lot of oil, it is highly flammable and one mistake can trigger an unstoppable kitchen fire.
To prevent this, make sure to keep the deep fryer at least sixteen inches away from other appliances that produce heat or open flames. If your kitchen is too narrow, use a metal divider to separate the deep fryer from the other cooking appliances.
Remove Any Flammable Materials from the Kitchen
How often did you use a cloth around the grill, even though your common sense tells you this could be dangerous? No matter how careful you are, using flammable materials around cooking equipment is an accident waiting to happen.
To prevent this from happening, keep all flammable materials like hot pads, oven mitts, paper towels and dish towels away from the cooking equipment.
Educate Your Family
Now that you know what it takes to prevent a kitchen fire, make sure you pass that knowledge onto your family members. Teach your kids not to play around the stove with flammable materials. Tell everyone not to leave the kitchen unattended, even while making coffee.
If a fire does break out, make sure you and your family know when it’s safe to try and extinguish the fire and when the best course of action is anevacuation. However, if you follow the advice in this article, a kitchen fire is less likely to occur in the first place.
