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Fire & Life Safety Section: Stovetop Cooking Fires - A Solution in Any Community
IAFC On Scene: June 15, 2009 As a fire chief, it’s important to share innovative solutions that reduce community risk. I believe the phrase “Noblesse oblige” says it best: the position demands it of us. The recent multiple-loss tragedies due to unattended cooking in Charlotte and Atlanta remind us that stovetop cooking fires represent the largest cause of home fires. The NFIRS data states that cooking fires were responsible for about 80 deaths, 3,875 injuries and $481,000,000 in property loss in the U.S. in 2002. Since then the numbers of deaths, injuries and property loss continues to grow. In the community where I live and work, stovetop fires represent 40% of all residential fires. The number of stovetop fires is on the rise, and there is a solution. As fire service leaders, we’re required to look ahead of the troops, over the treetops, and make sure all the work clearing the trail on the ground is headed in the right direction. It doesn’t matter how hard you work to clear that trail or how much money you spend—if the trail goes in the wrong direction, you won’t get where you want to go. Everyone who has taken Chemistry 101 or remembers fire-behavior class from recruit school knows that all combustibles have a unique temperature at which they’ll ignite and continue to burn. We lump materials that have similar burning characteristics into classes. Food, paper and cloth are examples of class-A materials or common combustibles. There is a technology solution to this community fire problem. It saves energy and won’t allow common combustibles to ignite and burn on the stovetop. An electric element on a typical electric range will heat to about 1300-1600 degrees F; common combustibles generally ignite and burn at about 700 F. A temperature control device that prevents the element from reaching these temperatures eliminates all stovetop fires, including cooking oil fires. Lower-temperature cooking elements create two notable side effects. There is about a 5% increase in cooking time. It takes me about seven minutes to boil water on my electric stove; with a temperature control device, it would take me 21 seconds longer to do the same thing. The other effect is energy savings. Tests and actual experience point to a savings that vary somewhere between $30–$50 annually per unit. Collectively, a community of 100,000 could save about $1,800,000 in energy costs each year. This device is available as a simple retrofit and is being installed in high-risk environments like college dorms, low-income housing and homes for the elderly. Many fire service leaders are applying for grants to install these safety devices in high-risk homes. The cost for one such device, Safe-t-element, is about $170 and a complete retrofit is around $215 per unit, including the labor to install the device. If stove manufacturers had the vision and will to do so, these temperature control devices could be installed during the manufacturing process. This would drive the cost of the safety device down considerably. The easiest and safest fire to fight is one that never happens. Through this temperature control device, we can significantly reduce the number of home fires firefighters respond to each year. If we agree that citizens only call the fire department for about 10% of all stovetop fires and that about 200,000 stovetop fires are reported each year in the United States, this device could eliminate millions of fires each year in the U.S. alone. Additionally, we would prevent costly false alarms, achieve heightened firefighter safety, save energy, preserve residential properties and protect at-risk individuals. Nationally, the fire service is working hard to require fire safe cigarettes and ban novelty lighters, because these two things represent a significant community risk in terms of fire deaths, injuries and property loss. Unattended cooking fires represent even a bigger community risk and it must be our next destination in reducing our community risk, as fire service leaders—Noblesse oblige! Wayne Senter is fire chief of South Kitsap Fire & Rescue in Port Orchard, Wash. He is a past chair of the Fire & Life Safety Section. |
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