You are cooking dinner and using a oil or grease on top of the stove. You get called away for a few moments, not realizing that you are cooking at too high of a temperature. Upon returning, you lift the lid off of the pan to check progress and a column of fire, reaching to the cabinets above, greets you. Do you - (choose the answer that is most correct) A. Pour water on the fire to put out the grease fire. B. Pick up the pan and try to dump it into the sink or carry it outside C. Dump flour on the fire to put it out. D. Spray the base of the fire with a chemical fire extinguisher. E. Put the lid back on the pan, turn down the heat on the stove and wait for the fire to die out. The correct answer is E. Replacing the lid will deprive oxygen from the fire and when coupled with reduced heat, will safely extinguish the fire. NEVER, NEVER pour water on a grease fire, unless you want 2nd and 3rd degree burns on your upper body. NEVER, NEVER try to move the pot, you or someone near could get seriously burned or you could spread the fire. Dumping flour on a small oil fire is okay, but it is not your best choice, as the flour itself can burn. Fire Extinguishers are a good choice, but are not always the best choice as they tend to splatter the oil or grease, further damaging the area around the stove and/or potentially spraying hot grease or oil on you. If the pan did not have a lid, any larger lid will work and if that is not available, wet a dish towel and drape it carefully across the pan, from front to back. Have another ready if the initial one appears to not fully extinguish the fire. Here is a video you should watch: YouTube - Death in the Kitchen (Warning) I mention this as we responded tonight to grease fire where the wife tried to move the pan, spilling it on her stove and building a larger fire than the one she was initially facing. Had she simply replaced the lid...
About a month or so ago, a similar situation occured in a neighboring fire district. The wife picked up the burning pan to carry it outside. Her two-year-old daughter was in the kitchen. She saw the fire & was frightened. She did what any 2yo would do and ran to mom and hugged her legs. The mom then stumbled with the grease and poured it on her daughter, severly burning her head, face, upper torso and legs. I can't imagine the horror the mom felt, nor the pain the dear child endured.
My wife was cooking oatmeal and my step son came up her and scared her and she pulled the pan off and poured the hot water and meal on his leg...luckily no scar that you can see but when he gets pissed (usually when I'm laying down dad discipline) that area of his leg gets super red.
I'm sorry Jeff, but I had known the "lid" trick ever since I was in grade school in the fifties. And for the simple reason that there used to be a sort of "class" on this sort of stuff put on by the school itself. I guess that public schools don't do that anymore? It was some sort of public service movie we got to leave class for and go to the auditorium for a film. Great break in the normal school day, and then replayed in our individual classrooms over the next week or so. It was (as I said) in the fifties, but when I moved to a different school in the sixties, they still had the same show and program at that one too. For some reason I remember baking soda, not flour. Flour dust is an explosive remember. Guess they (schools) don't do that sort of thing anymore.
