Citation

Wijayasinghe MS, Makey TB. Fire Technol. 1997; 33(2): 140-166.

Affiliation

Alberta Labour, Fire Commissioner's Office, Edmonton, Alberta

Copyright

(Copyright © 1997, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1023/A:1015395001403

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper begins with a brief statistical analysis to establish the significant contribution of cooking equipment fires to fire losses and injuries in Canadian homes. Due to lack of comprehensive fire loss data for Canadian homes, further analysis is focused on Alberta data. The most frequent ignition scenario, based on a top-down analysis of Alberta home fires, was the ignition of overheated cooking oil in pots, deep-fat fryers, or pans heated on stove tops. These fires also accounted for the majority of home fire injuries. Fire characteristics of cooking oils, which point to the importance of maintaining oil temperatures below their flash points, and thermostatically controlled deep-fat fryers as the best available solution to the problem are discussed.