Speaker 1:
Up in flames. This is the last thing you’d want to have happen in your kitchen, but if it did, would you know what to do? Unfortunately, the answer for many, many people would be no.
Speaker 2:
And it’s why kitchen fires are the leading cause of house fires in the United States, resulting in hundreds of deaths and millions of dollars in damage every year.
Speaker 1:
Consumer editor, Susan Koeppen is here with a special consumer investigation. This is helpful info you have for us.
Susan Koeppen:
Absolutely. We’re heading into the holidays, prime time for cooking and baking. In fact, Thanksgiving is the number one day for kitchen fires and knowing how to handle a cooking fire can make the difference between a small problem and a major catastrophe. And we asked a local fire department to show us the right moves by literally setting a kitchen on fire.
Susan Koeppen:
It doesn’t take long for a small cooking fire to become a raging inferno.
Speaker 4:
Apartment 525, stove is on fire.
Susan Koeppen:
Kitchen fires are responsible for more than 400 deaths and more than 5,000 injuries each year.
Susan Koeppen:
Do you think that most people know what to do in a kitchen fire?
Speaker 5:
Unfortunately, most people don’t know what to do because we see it time and time again, people doing the wrong thing.
Susan Koeppen:
Jason Zeigler admits he did the wrong thing when oil for his chicken wings caught fire.
Susan Koeppen:
You walk into the kitchen and what do you see?
Jason Zeigler:
I see a bunch of smoke and I see a flame coming from the pot.
Susan Koeppen:
And your first reaction is what?
Jason Zeigler:
Get the pot out of the house. I reached out like this and grabbed on to the handles.
Susan Koeppen:
Jason says he grabbed the burning pot and tried to get it out the door.
Jason Zeigler:
When I was turning around to open the door with my backside, that’s when it flashed over and caught my arm and I dropped the pot and it come up on me. This was one of the worst areas here. The skin actually started coming down and looked like melted wax. I was burned here on my right arm and the right side of my face right here and onto my ear.
Susan Koeppen:
Jason spent 11 days in the hospital and he still bears the scars of what happened when his small kitchen fire got out of hand.
Jason Zeigler:
If I would’ve known then what I know now, I could have prevented all this from happening.
Susan Koeppen:
With the help of the Beaver Falls Fire Department and six different cameras, we’re about to show you the dos and don’ts of handling a kitchen fire.
Speaker 5:
We’re placing one cup of oil in the pan.
Susan Koeppen:
All it takes is some heat and that oil can ignite. Your first reaction may be to throw water on the fire, but that is the wrong thing to do. Water, oil don’t mix.
Speaker 5:
Don’t mix. Don’t mix.
Susan Koeppen:
You’re going to make a fire bomb.
Speaker 5:
That’s exactly what we’re doing.
Susan Koeppen:
Watch what happens when we pour one cup of water-
Speaker 5:
You guys ready?
Susan Koeppen:
Into one cup of burning oil.
Susan Koeppen:
The blast is so intense, it rips the curtains off the window. What happens to the person standing there who just dumped that water?
Speaker 5:
That fire is coming right in that person’s face.
Susan Koeppen:
Even using the wrong kind of fire extinguisher, like this water-based one, can be disastrous. The fire doubles in size.
Speaker 5:
I’m just going to pour ordinary water on the towel.
Susan Koeppen:
And using a wet dish towel is also a wrong move. Watch.
Speaker 5:
I’m going to go ahead and throw this.
Susan Koeppen:
The towel just pushes the flames higher out the back and if you think grabbing something like flour is a good option…
Speaker 5:
Flour will tend to make the fire grow as you see.
Susan Koeppen:
In a kitchen fire, here’s what you should do. Grab the nearest lid.
Speaker 5:
Take the lid and slide the lid right over the burning pot.
Susan Koeppen:
Immediately turn off the stove and leave the pan alone. Here’s what happens if you remove the lid too soon.
Speaker 5:
That could reignite very quickly. There it went.
Susan Koeppen:
If you don’t have a lid handy, something like a cookie sheet will do. You can also use a fire extinguisher made for grease fires like this easy to use spray can called Tundra.
Speaker 5:
You don’t want to get it too close because if you do it will drive the cooking oil all over the wall, all over the stove.
Susan Koeppen:
Stay back four to six feet, aim at the base of the fire and remember to turn the stove off when the fire is out.
Speaker 5:
What you do is you place one on each side and this little device called StoveTop FireStop is a fire suppressor in a can.
Susan Koeppen:
So you just have a magnet here and you click it into place.
Speaker 5:
That’s all you do, click it into place and it’s there all the time, ready to go.
Susan Koeppen:
Here’s the device in action. When a stove fire reaches the fuse on the FireStop, fire suppressing powder comes raining down and just like that, the fire is out. Quick action like this is crucial when it comes to a kitchen fire.
Susan Koeppen:
From the point you see a grease fire until the point it’s too late, how much time do you have?
Speaker 5:
Once it’s starting to burn, 30 seconds, maybe. That’s it.
Susan Koeppen:
We decided to let this fire on the stove burn. In just one minute, heavy black smoke was pushing down from the ceiling and it took just 30 seconds more before the cabinets were on fire.
Susan Koeppen:
So a small grease fire turns into this.
Speaker 5:
It happens every day. You have to be prepared. You have to know what to do in the event of a fire.
Susan Koeppen:
And experts say you should never leave food on attended while it is cooking. It is the leading factor in kitchen fires and you should always cook with a lid and a cooking mitt by the stove just in case so you can act quickly.
Speaker 2:
This is one of my biggest fears. I’m so glad you did this. Now, one thing I hear about is baking soda. Does that work to put out a fire?
Susan Koeppen:
Yeah, baking soda can put out a fire, but they don’t recommend it. One, you’re going to start looking for the baking soda. Where is it? And then you have to get so close to the fire to dump it in and then what if you try to throw it on? It’s going to spray the fire so they don’t recommend it.
Speaker 2:
Okay.
Speaker 1:
These things look like-
