how to put out a grease fire safely

A good video my firefighter friend sent me. He says:
"I'll assume that you have all heard the best thing to do in case of a kitchen grease fire is "Put A Lid On It".... i.e. simply put a lid on the pot or pan to smother the fire. I'm sure you've also been told to never put water to a grease or oil fire. Well, I'm a firm believer that it's one thing to be told and another thing to see why. I'll admit the British twist of wetting a towel to place over the pot is new to me but seems sound enough to work in absence of the pot's lid.

General safety tip: When cooking with grease or oil ALWAYS have the specific lid for that pot or pan within arms reach just in case. NEVER move the burning pot or pan. Statistically you'll badly burn yourself and set other parts of your house on fire in the process. Even if you put the lid on it and smother the fire, still call 911 immediately. Let the fire department make sure all is safe, that's what your property taxes help pay for.

Statistical fact: The leading cause of structure fires in North America are cooking related.

The physics: (Please feel free to skip this part if you just want to see the cool video..... read on if you want to understand the "why")

Water, when it turns to steam, expands 1,700 times. Yes, one thousand seven hundred.

When you cook with oil, the oil is generally much hotter than the boiling point of water. So, if you drop water into it the hot oil, the water will do two things almost instantaneously:

1) Sink to the bottom of the pot, because it's heavier than the oil.
2) Immediately expand into steam occupying 1,700 times the original volume of the water.

As it does this, it pushes all of the oil out of the pot ahead of the steam, turning a manageable fire into an inferno."

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Howto & Style

Tags:

• grease
• fire
• safety