Speaker 1:
Coverage you can count on. This is FOX 2 News.
Speaker 2:
They are the most common and often the most devastating fires that firefighters and medics respond to.
Tom:
And one wrong move can make a bad situation much worse. They are the fires that start in the kitchen. And just a couple of days before one of the biggest cooking days of the year, FOX 2’s George Sells joins us with a FOX Files story you need to see. George?
George:
Well, Tom, this is a story about the kind of fire that hurts more people than any other. Similar reports had been done in other cities, but this is the first time St. Louis firefighters have taken part. It comes with a cautionary tale, as well as a look at a product that might save you from a lifetime of pain.
George:
This is what happens when you pour water on a grease fire. A terrifying moment that changed Yolanda Johnson’s life. The simple act of lighting a stove, it took Johnson’s six months to be able to do that again. Her scarred arms provide a clue of why.
Yolanda:
I don’t know what happened or how it happened, but my sleeve caught on fire and it just went woosh! The flames went woosh! And my shirt caught on fire, so I automatically took the shirt, but I automatically … then my friend was with me. She automatically threw the water in the skillet. It went everywhere. It went, like, back, up, and back.
Speaker 6:
And all over you.
Yolanda:
And all over me.
George:
Water made that grease explode. 40% of Yolanda’s upper body was covered in third and even fourth degree burns. Fourth degrees is when the burn gets through the skin to muscle and bone. First, there was shock. Then…
Yolanda:
Once the ambulance got there, that’s when I felt the first pain, and that’s the worst pain you will ever feel.
George:
Kitchen fires are the cause for more than 40% of fires in this nation, and nearly 40% of the injuries too.
Dennis:
Any type of burn injury is a horrific injury.
George:
And fire chief Dennis Jenkerson has seen plenty.
Dennis:
It’s normally a pretty substantial injury once we get there.
George:
All because when you see this, your gut says do something.
Dennis:
Go up, turn the gas off, hit the pot by accident, and spill it all over yourself. That’s the instinct. And this is going pretty good. This is hot. People are going to make mistakes in this situation, and that’s when we get called in and they’re laying on the floor.
George:
How bad is it? Just watch. A fully protected firefighter literally wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole. This one was 12 feet.
Dennis:
We’re going to expand that little cup of water about 25,000 times.
George:
Into a ball of fire.
Dennis:
If you get a fireball … you get a fireball inside the kitchen, and if you’re close to it you got your clothes, your hair. You’re burned bad.
George:
Even seven years later, as you can see watching this is hard for Yolanda.
Yolanda:
Yeah, it just brings it back. All I remember was trying to put it out, wanting to put it out. How are we going to put it out? Thinking we need to put it out.
George:
We’ve been taught to turn off the burner and cover it, but what about taking human reaction out of this altogether? This little canister is called the StoveTop FireStop. You saw what happened when water hit the fire. Now watch what happens when this little gadget, the FireStop, is triggered. With a flash of chemical, the fire is all but gone.
Yolanda:
Wow. Yeah. I’d love one of those.
George:
And there are at least a dozen municipalities around the country that now require these in some homes, usually apartments, or are considering it. Here in St. Louis, fire officials would like to see a UL product certification for the FireStop before making an endorsement. But they can see a benefit.
Dennis:
It might be one of those things that you don’t have to worry about. You don’t have to grab. You don’t have to activate. It’s automatic. If you have a fire extinguisher in your house, you have to remember to grab the fire extinguisher, pull the pin, aim it, and hopefully you won’t aim a directly into the grease and splatter the grease all over.
George:
For Yolanda, it was about learning to deal with scars.
Yolanda:
The scarring is … we’ve got video with the scarring inside and out.
George:
And finding the strength to cope with her own tragedy.
Yolanda:
It’s just not there at the time you need it to be there.
George:
We have a lot of information on our website, FOX2now.com, including raw video from these fires, and an extensive photo gallery as well. And if you are interested in the StoveTop FireStop, we actually have a contest on our website to give a few of them away. You have from now until Sunday to register. Just head to FOX2now.com and look for it on the FOX Files webpage. George Sells, FOX 2 News.
