Fire!

A friend of mine runs the website of a volunteer fire group in Nova Scotia. There’s lots of useful and interesting information on the website and, naturally, I was drawn to the page about kitchen fires. Whilst there, I was shocked to discover:

Statistics indicate that 48 percent of household fires and 4 percent of fire caused fatalities are cooking related.

Wow! That’s pretty strong stuff. I’d not realised the huge importance of the subject so I decided to do a bit of digging to see what I could find out. There’s lots of information available as well as many free resources.

The UK Fire Service website has a whole section on fire safety in the home with plenty of advice. They say:

Most fires in the home can be prevented by taking some basic and common-sense precautions. This section will help you to inspect your home for anything that could cause a fire. You can then take the necessary actions to protect your home and the people who live in it.

They offer a free booklet called FIRE SAFETY IN THE HOME, which is available as a PDF (370 kb). This contains lots of useful information, presented in a very clear way, including a bed time checklist and lots of other things you can do to help prevent fires in the home.

They also offer free Home Fire Risk Assessments:

Many people are not aware that the Fire and Rescue Service will come and visit your home, completely free of charge, at a time that suits you. We will advise you on any aspect of fire safety within your home and help you devise an escape plan, if you do not already have one.

And by the way, they seem to roughly agree with the Canadian statistic above which shocked me. In their free booklet they say, “Over half of all home fires are caused by cooking accidents.” I would highly recommend you pay a visit to the Fire Service website. There’s so much good stuff in there. They even have a page all about chip pans – which cause one fifth of accidental fires in the home. I urge you to read this page.

The direct.govt.uk website also provides some information and a rather boring ‘game’ as well as interactive stuff for kids which takes forever to load and doesn’t seem to work very well. Maybe I’m just not technically minded enough for it. Bah!