The kitchen is No. 1 spot for fires to start, chief says

Newton Fire Chief Jarrod Wellik said there has been a rash of home fires recently, many of which began in the stove area of kitchens. The Newton Fire Department responded to 77 calls over the first eight days of January.

Wellik said kitchen fires are the leading type of fires that occur in U.S. residential structures. He provided the Daily News with some alarming national statistics. While fires with causes such as smoking have decreased over the past 10 years, cooking fires have increased.

From 2003 to 2012, there was been a 6 percent estimated decrease nationwide in overall fires, along with a 21 percent decrease in deaths, a 1 percent decrease in injuries and 2 percent decrease in dollar loss with an inflation adjustment. However, cooking fires showed increases on all three scales.

The number of cooking fires went up 12 percent, with a 40-percent increase in residential cooking fire injuries and a 61 percent increase in dollar loss. The estimated number of cooking fires in 2012 alone was four times more than the amount of heating fires in that year.

According to a Consumer Product Safety Commission, most burns associated with cooking equipment, cookware, and tableware were caused by contact with a hot object or liquid rather than by fire or flame.

Eighty-three percent of frying fires began in the first 15 minutes of cooking.

Wellik also presented some general safety tips to hopefully minimize the amount of kitchen fires that tie up fire crews and endanger residents and their neighbors.

According to the National Fire Protection Association, ranges or ovens were the most common cooking equipment involved in non-fire cooking burns. Only one out of eight thermal burns involving ranges or ovens were due to fire or flame. Although tableware is not itself used for cooking, it often holds hot food or beverages even when not used for cooking.

Here are some more tips from the NFPA:

• Keep hot foods and liquids away from table and counter edges.

• Children under age 5 face a higher risk of non-fire burns associated with cooking than of being burned in a cooking fire. These young children account for 7 percent of the population but much larger percentages of non-fire burn injuries from cooking equipment, tableware such as bowls and cups, and cookware such as pots and pans. Have a “kid-free zone” of at least 3 feet around the stove and areas where hot food or drink is prepared or carried.

• Never hold a child while you are cooking, drinking a hot liquid or carrying hot foods or liquids.

• If you are sleepy or have consumed alcohol don’t use the stove or stovetop.

• Stay in the kitchen while you are frying, grilling or broiling food. If you leave the kitchen for even a short period of time, turn off the stove.

• If you are simmering, baking, roasting, or boiling food, check it regularly, remain in the home while food is cooking and use a timer to remind you that you are cooking.

• Keep any thing that can catch fire — oven mitts, wooden utensils, food packaging, towels or curtains — away from your stovetop.

• If you have a small (grease) cooking fire and decide to fight the fire.

• For an oven fire, turn of the heat, keep the door closed and call 911.