If you’ve never experienced a home cooking fire, it’s easy to imagine such a possibility as just about the last thing could ever happen in your home.

But not so fast.  Because according to data accumulated and distributed by U.S. fire departments, there are an average of 162,400 home cooking fires every year resulting in an average of 430 civilian deaths and 5,400 injuries per year.  To say nothing of the combined total of $1.1 billion in reported property damage between 2009 – 2013.

All of which is to say that home cooking fires aren’t things that happen once in a blue moon.  Rather, they happen an average of 445 times each day.  Here at Excel Electric, we don’t want you to suffer any of the ill effects from a home cooking fire.  Accordingly, we’re pleased to present the following 9 ways to help prevent them:

1. Never leave food unattended while using the stovetop or the oven broiler.

2. Check on your food regularly while cooking, baking, or roasting, and remain indoors at all times.

3. Use a timer to remind you to check on food that you are preparing in the oven.

4. Avoid wearing loose, flowy clothing or dangling sleeves while cooking.

5. Enforce a three foot “kid and pet-free zone” around the stove.

6. Keep anything that can catch fire like pot holders, oven mitts, wooden utensils, paper towels, and food packaging away from your stovetop, or any other heat-generating appliance.

7. Clean cooking surfaces regularly to prevent grease buildup.

8. Keep a small fire extinguisher in your kitchen and familiarize yourself with how to use it before you actually need to.

9. Before going to bed or leaving the house, always check the kitchen to make sure that all burners, ovens, and small appliances are turned off.

All makes perfect sense, right?  And yet for your good intentions, life sometimes gets in the way, like someone suddenly ringing your doorbell and no one else is home to answer it, or you hear a child crying at the other end of the house and you rush off to investigate – and on and on it goes.  That’s why, to further protect your home and family, we recommend the following:

• Install a fire extinguisher in or right nearby your kitchen.
• Contact Excel Electric about installing hard-wired smoke and fire alarms throughout your home. When one goes off, they all go off, and that alerts everyone in your house at the same time.

In addition, we urge you to consider a whole-house electrical wiring and safety inspection for your home, especially if it’s been a year or long since that service was last provided.  Among other benefits, it will allow us to check and correct for any potential risks of an electrical fire, something that can occur in your kitchen or anywhere else in your home.

Your safety is always our number one concern, and Excel Electric is on hand now and always to help enhance it any way we can.