Emery Volunteer Fire Deparment would like to share the following Fire Prevention information from the Utah State Fire Marshal’s Office.
Stay Alert
- To prevent cooking fires, you must be alert. You won’t be alert if you are sleepy, have taken medicine or drugs, or consumed alcohol that makes you drowsy.
What What You Heat!
- The leading cause of fires in the kitchen is unattended cooking.
- Stay in the kitchen when you are frying, grilling, or broiling food. If you leave the kitchen for even a short time, turn off the stove.
- If you are simmering, baking, roasting, or boiling food, check it regularly, remain in the home while the food is cooking, and use a timer to remind you that you’re cooking.
Keep Things That Can Catch Fire and Heat Souces Apart
- Keep anything that can catch fire – oven mitts, wooden utensils, food packaging, towels or curtains – away from your stovetop.
- Keep the stovetop, burners, and oven clean.
- Wear short, close-fitting, or tightly rolled sleeves when cooking. Loose clothing can dangle onto stove burners and can catch fire if it comes in contact with a gas flame or electric burner.
Turkey Fryers
- NFPA discourages the use of outdoor gas-fueled turkey fryers that immerse the turkey in hot oil. These turkey fryers use a substantial quantity of cooking oil at high temperatures, and units currently available for home use pose a significant danger that hot oil will be released at some point during the cooking process. The use of turkey fryers by consumers can lead to devastating burns, or other injuries and the destruction of property.
- Keep matches and lighters up high, out of the reach of children, preferably in a locked cabinet. It is an adult’s job to keep fire tools away from children.
- If you feel you must keep matches or lighters more convenient, have only one lighter or matchbook and keep it securely with you at all times.
- Teach young children to tell a grown-up if they find matches or lighters.
- Lighters that look like toys can confuse children. Do not buy or use them.
- If you are concerned about a child’s use of fire tools or interest in fire, please contact your local fire department to find a Juvenile Firesetter Program, a free and educational class.
Prevent scalds and burns in the kitchen.
- Teach children that hot things burn.
- Place objects so they cannot be pulled or knocked over.
- Turn pot handles away from the stove’s edge.
- Keep appliance cords coiled and away from counter edges.
- Keep hot foods and liquids away from the table and counter edges.
- Use dry oven mitts or potholders. The heat from hot cookware or tableware could turn that moisture into a scald burn.
- If you have young children in the home cook on the stove back burners.
- When children are old enough, teach them to cook safely.