Burn Awareness Week

DULUTH, Minn. – Monday is the start of Burn Awareness week and this year the focus is on cooking safety in the kitchen.

The Duluth Fire Department says when you’re cooking, minimize distractions and always check to make sure your oven, stove, or anything else is turned off when you’re done. If you experience a grease fire, never use water to put it out as that can make it worse. Instead use a fire extinguisher and cover the fire with a lid, if you can, to starve the blaze of oxygen.

Also, make sure you keep kids and pets away from the stove, and turn the handles on pots and pans away from the edge so they can’t be pulled down by them.

“Cooking fires are the number one cause of residential structure fires in the U.S.. So, we want to take time this week and make sure that we focus on that and tell people to be aware of what they are doing in the kitchen. We don’t want people to get burned, we don’t want people to get hurt, and that is our biggest and most main concern right now,” Duluth Fire Department Fire Marshall, Lisa Consie says.

The Duluth Fire Department will be posting messages on their Facebook page every day this week to raise further burn awareness.