Cooking — the leading cause of home fires and injuries.
Cooking equipment is involved in more than 10,000 reported home fires each year, and most of those involve the kitchen stovetop. Most cooking fires occur because of unattended cooking.
Safety Tips
Pay attention to your cooking. Stay in the kitchen when you are frying, grilling, or broiling food.
If you must leave the room, even for a short period of time, turn off the stove.
When you are simmering, baking, boiling, or roasting food, check it regularly, stay in the home, and use a timer to remind you.
If you have young children, use the stove’s back burners whenever possible.
Keep children and pets at least 3 feet away from the stove.
When you cook, wear clothing with tight-fitting sleeves.
Allow food cooked in a microwave oven to cool for a minute or more before you remove it from the oven and use an oven mitt.
Open microwaved food slowly. Hot steam escaping from the container can cause painful burns. Let food cool before eating.
Heating
Home heating fires peak during the months of December, January, and February.
Safety Tips
Keep space heaters at least 3 feet from people and from anything that can burn, such as curtains and bedding.
Turn space heaters off when you go to bed or leave the room.
Intentional Fires
In 2000-2004, 19,000 home structure fires were intentionally set. These fires caused 310 deaths and $487 million in property loss.
Safety Tips
Encourage your community to implement an anti-arson program.
Keep trash from collecting on your property.
Remove abandoned vehicles from your property.
Remove dead branches that could be used as a fuel source.
Store flammable liquids in a locked shed or detached garage.
Install lighting around the property to deter intruders.
If a child displays fire-starting behavior, seek professional help through your fire department or from a mental health professional.
Do not hesitate to report a neighborhood child who starts fires to his or her parents or to authorities.
Candles
A candle is an open flame. It can easily ignite combustibles nearby. Candles caused 4 percent of the home fires in 2000-2004, 7 percent of the associated deaths and 12 percent of the associated injuries. More than half started when something that could burn was too close to the candle. An earlier study found that candles used for light caused one-third of the fatal candle fires.
Safety Tips
Extinguish candles when you leave the room or go to bed.
Use flashlights, not lit candles, during power outages.
Keep candles at least one foot away from things that can burn, like curtains, paper, and bedding.
Never leave a child unattended in a room with a lit candle.
Smoke alarms save lives!
Install smoke alarms in every sleeping room, outside each sleeping area and on every level of the home. For the best protection, interconnect all smoke alarms throughout the home. When one sounds, they all sound. Test your smoke alarms at least once a month. Replace any alarm that’s more than 10 years old.
Smoking
Smoking materials (cigarettes, cigars, pipes, etc.) are the leading cause of fire deaths in the United States. The most common things first ignited in home smoking fires are mattresses, bedding, upholstered furniture, and trash.
Safety Tips
Designate a smoking area outside the home.
Provide smokers with deep, sturdy ashtrays.
Keep smoking materials away from anything that can burn.
Choose fire-safe cigarettes.
