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Home » News & Events » 2012 » December » Kitchen Fire Safety Advice

Kitchen Fire Safety Advice

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The ‘Fire starts when your attention stops!’ flyer, featuring a dramatic image of a kitchen stove on fire, encourages people to keep an eye on their cooking at all times and to be aware of particular risks associated with the kitchen.

Station Commander Alan Haley from HWFRS’s Community Safety department explained: “Nearly half of all house fires the Service attends start in the kitchen and so the advice on this flyer is valid all year round. However, Christmas is a time when more people are cooking and entertaining, and there’s likely to be more distractions, and so the advice is more relevant than ever over the festive period.

“We want everyone to enjoy their Christmas in safety and they can certainly help reduce the risk of a fire in their kitchen by following this common-sense advice.”

Key advice in the flyer includes ‘standing by your pan’ ie keeping a careful eye on your cooking at all times, and removing the saucepan and turning off the ring if you are called away from the kitchen for any reason. It includes a reminder to keep your cooker and grill pan clean as burnt food and a build-up of grease can cause fires, and to avoid cooking if you have been drinking, as you can easily become drowsy or less alert than you think.

Other advice includes switching to oven chips or a thermostatically controlled deep fat fryer rather than using a conventional chip pan, keeping tea towels and kitchen paper away from the stove where they could catch fire and switching off electrical appliances when not in use.

SC Haley added: “It also includes a reminder to install a smoke alarm and test it on a regular basis as this will give you valuable extra time to escape a fire in the kitchen or in any other room in your home.”

A copy of the Cooking Safety flyer is available and anyone wanting further fire safety advice or an appointment for a free Home Fire Safety Check can call HWFRS’s FREPHONE number on 0800 032 1155.