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Fire danger stalks Newtown kitchens

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Graph showing causes of fires in Newtown 2014

Fig 1 – Causes of Serious Fires in Newtown 2014

BREAKFAST, lunch and dinner cooking fires help make Newtown Fire Station one of the busiest in the country.

Call-out times show an increase in calls at meal times.

Time of Fires in Newtown 2014

Fig 2 – Time of Fires in Newtown 2014

Newtown Station recorded 581 incidents from more than 1200 calls in the 12 months to August, making it the 11th busiest fire station in the country.

Well over half of the serious incidents were caused by carelessness, with more than 30 related to kitchen fires, says senior station officer Michael Dombroski.

The New Zealand Fire Service has identified kitchen fires as a significant hazard.

To address the risk, national and local programmes have been developed targeting improved fire safety, knowledge and behaviour when cooking.

National programmes include Don’t Drink and Fry and Keep Looking While You’re Cooking.

“By far the highest cause of any fires, by huge amounts, is unattended cooking” says Mr Dombroski.

“People put their dinner on and go and have a shower. If the shower is long enough, the whole thing will get going.”

“They go and watch TV, they just get distracted. People cook and leave the kitchen.”

Dombroski says people can get severely burnt by trying to put out cooking fires.

“You shouldn’t put water on a cooking fire, you should smother it in a wet tea towel or slide a lid over the top.

“It will go out, because it will be starved of any oxygen, and then flick off all the switches so that there’s no heat.

“You shouldn’t pick it up and try and run with it outside, that’s got a lot of people burnt.

“Once the heat’s off it will make it easier for us to put out.”

At least two of the properties were severely damaged by blazes.

The French Door Factory in Mansfield Street was severely damaged by fire in June and a nearby house in Millward Street was almost destroyed in September 2013.


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