A good friend who I have known my entire life (his mum was my vacation bible school teacher) had a grease fire in his house last night and it burnt down. He was actually asleep, and his wife was cooking something and it caught fire and got out of control quickly. She posted about it on FB and said “I know you aren’t supposed to use water on grease fires, but I forgot about using flour.”
I was a volunteer fireman for a number of years in my youth, and took a bunch of courses on this stuff, including smoke diving classes, and I want to be as clear as I possibly can:
DO NOT POUR FLOUR OR BASICALLY ANYTHING OTHER THAN BAKING SODA OR A CHEMICAL FIRE EXTINGUISHER ON A GREASE FIRE. EVER.
Flour on a grease fire will explode:
This is what you should do if you have a grease fire:
Turn off the stove. Cover the fire with a lid if you can. Put baking soda on it or use a Class B chemical fire extinguisher. If that fails, GET EVERYONE AND THE PETS AND GET THE FUCK OUT. It’s just a god damned house.
The end. This has been an especially tough couple of weeks for my friend- his mother had her leg amputated because of circulatory issues and now has MRSA and pneumonia, and now this. I stopped by and talked to him early this morning and he is just devastated. We’re a tight little town and he knows he can stay here and basically anywhere he needs, so we’ll get through this.
SFBayAreaGal
You’re a good person John
vickie feminist
We’ve heard a thousand times about baking soda in the frig for odors, but nobody tells us to keep it by the stove for fires. Thanks, John.
I am so sorry for your friend. Any place we can donate?
Major Major Major Major
ISTR a damp towel was OK in a pinch. But yeah, extinguisher.
*looks up where his is*
rikyrah
Thanks for the PSA. I will file this away, hopefully never to have to use.
PS-you are good people, Cole.
Manyakitty
How can we help?
Barbara
We keep a fire extinguisher on our kitchen window sill but it is always good to be reminded of what you need to do in a situation where panic has a better than even chance of overriding what you have learned about such things. So, so sorry for your friend, especially for his mother. MRSA is really frightening.
Aimai
Thanks for this PSA John. It reminds me to get a fire extinguisher for the kutchen again. My best thoughts to your friend and his family.
SWMBO
Also keep a small extinguisher in the car. And check the dates to keep them current. And make sure everyone knows how to use it. During a fire is not the time to read the instructions.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve set the stove or oven on fire. The oven is slightly different even if it’s a spillover that ignited.
Know where and which breaker is for the stove. Throw the breaker if you can’t reach across the stove to turn it off.
satby
John, let us know if anyone sets up a fundraiser for them. They’re having horrible luck.
And I hope his mom recovers; my dear friend’s mom got the same combo after a hip replacement failed and didn’t make it.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Let me show ya something. Suppose you’re frying bacon and your face catches fire….
Sorry, but I still expect Fire Marshall Bill to show up in such vids.
Betty Cracker
Glad you posted this; I had no idea flour would make a grease fire worse! Hope your friend gets through this okay and that his mom makes a full recovery. Let us know if we can help.
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
Or the lid. The lid is a great solution because it’s the one you’re most likely to have handy.
ruemara
I’m glad no one was hurt. How terrifying. I will go over this with my roommate. I don’t get grease fires, but I don’t live alone anymore. I hope your friend has an upswing in good things.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
Flour is flammable. When it’s suspended in air, it’s actually explosive, as many grain elevator explosions have shown.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: the pans I use that would tend to have fiery grease also have ventilated lids ?
Matt McIrvin
I’d never even heard of anyone trying to put a fire out with flour. It seems like a terrible idea in general.
My reflex when grease starts burning is always to slap a lid on it. Like they say, fire is a three-legged stool–you need fuel, oxygen and heat, and denying oxygen is the easiest thing to do. Generally works, but we do have an extinguisher in the kitchen.
gvg
I knew from Terry Pratchett’s diskworld stories that flour can be used to make a bomb. My aunt caught her hair on fire while frying french fries decades ago and was able to not panic and run outside and roll to put it out. I was told as a child that story and cautioned always to keep hair pulled back while cooking. I did not know about baking soda. I also have been cautioned about keeping the fire extinguisher where it can be bumped or knocked over by a kid or putting something else in a cabinet. I was thinking of installing an in the wall cabinet especially for it in my next kitchen. If they hit wrong, they can explode themselves because they are under pressure so they need to be secure but available.
mai naem mobile
I didn’t know about the water or flour or baking soda. Besides a fire extinguisher I thought you try to cover any fire.
O. Felix Culpa
I’m glad your friend is ok. I also appreciate the PSA about grease fires and how to deal with them.
And yes, it’s just a god damned house. I’m heartbroken right now, as a good woman who was a friend and our Democratic Party county chair was just killed in a horrific accident when a semi blew through a red light at speed and slammed into her car. It’s a terrible loss personally and for the party. She was doing great work getting the county organization unified and active. To say she’ll be missed is an understatement. The only comfort I find at present is the rising green blades of the irises which she gave us earlier this year.
Major Major Major Major
@O. Felix Culpa: that’s horrible, I’m so sorry.
O. Felix Culpa
@Major Major Major Major: Thank you. I’m a bit of a sodden mess and I appreciate your care.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: That’s what I do too. Cover the pan with a heavy lid. Also I try to keep my deep frying to a bare minimum.
skyweaver
Sorry to hear, John. I hope he gets through it all, that’s rough. Thanks for the PSA about the grease fire. I only knew you’re not supposed to put water on it.
Robert Sneddon
Chip (french fry) pan fires are in the top ten reasons for house fires in Scotland. I’ve had a pan of lard catch fire a couple of times but put the fire out with a damp towel when it happened, no biggie.
Fire blankets are a better bet for smothering stove-top fires; most commercial kitchens I’ve been in over the past few years have them in place close to the stoves. You can find such blankets on Amazon and elsewhere. They’re better than an extinguisher which might blow burning fat over other surfaces (such as people and pets…) and they last indefinitely, no need to worry about best-by dates and such.
SP
Sand is also a good solution- perhaps less likely to have it in the kitchen unless you have a kitty and use clay-based litter. But it’s great in a chemistry lab- one of the few things other than a class D extinguisher that can kill metal (e.g. magnesium) fires. The other option more common in a kitchen, besides baking soda, is regular salt if you have a big enough container available.
Just One More Canuck
@Roger Moore: Mythbusters did a piece about powdered creamer – the fireball was amazing. I would think that flour would be similar
We had a small electrical fire a few years ago – I was able to put it out quickly (still had the fire department come and make sure). The damage was minimal (mostly limited to one room) but it disrupted our lives for months
Major Major Major Major
@SP: I just imagined using *used* litter, ewwww.
Felonius Monk
@O. Felix Culpa: Sending you a virtual hug. Condolences. Losing good people is always difficult to cope with.
satby
@O. Felix Culpa: how awful for her family and friends! Condolences to all of you!
Roger Moore
@SP:
Sand won’t save you this time!
Villago Delenda Est
Glad to hear that the injuries are psychic only.
Still, be prepared, as they say among the Illidari.
Bruce K
I’m still scratching my head over how flour can be considered a good weapon against fires. What’s the logic? Smothering?
Percysowner
I had always heard to use salt on a grease fire, but if John says no then I’ll forget that. Now I need to find my fire extinguisher.
O. Felix Culpa
@Felonius Monk: @satby: Many, many thanks. This has hit me especially hard, especially when shitstains like Arpaio and the disgrace in the WH still walk the earth.
MaryL
I have twice in the past year managed to set my oven on fire as a result of butter overflows, and on both occasions shocked myself by having the wherewithal to grab baking soda out of the cabinet. And now I’ve finally learned to keep a dripping pan underneath whatever I’m baking to prevent spillage from hitting the hottest part of the oven.
Roger Moore
@Percysowner:
Salt would probably work- at least it isn’t going to catch on fire- but baking soda is an even better choice. The baking soda is likely to be a much finer powder, so it will cover the surface better. Also, and perhaps more important, when heated, baking soda decomposes and releases CO2, which will further help to smother the fire.
trollhattan
Our friend didn’t have a grease fire but spilled a pot of hot oil on herself, sending her to the hospital for three months. She went into cardiac arrest during one of the skin graft operations and had to be resuscitated.
I simply don’t do this kind of cooking.
Major Major Major Major
@trollhattan:
Can’t even like a pan of bacon do this?
trollhattan
@Major Major Major Major:
Mmmm, baconnnnn.
/Homer
SP
@Roger Moore: If your cooking involves things that can oxidize sand, your choice of cuisine went off the rails a long time ago.
Roger Moore
@SP:
That seems fair. Chlorine trifluoride makes even anthrax and tire rims look palatable.
Lyrebird
Oof. Oddly enough, I was just yesterday making the sprout read “BA-KING SO-DA” and nod his head why mama keeps it open next to the stove.
As @Roger Moore noted, flour makes a great bomb. “Great” not being the right term here. So glad they were able to get out in time.
I haven’t had the guts yet to practice evacuating through a window in our new apartment, a little worried the kid might try it without me, but I’ve got two chain ladders in place.
All the best wishes to your friends.
Barbara
@Roger Moore: Not just grain — sugar and many other kinds of “dust” can create conflagrations seeming out of nothing, with just a single spark. A sugar factory in Georgia burned to the ground, killing multiple people, after a single spark ignited sugar dust.
Cain
I haven’t had this happen much.. I think mostly I don’t cook a lot of things where there is grease build up. But my first instinct would have run out with the pan outside and take care of it there. Also I have a large lid that would have used as well.
Good on you Cole for taking them in if they need a space to stay.
catclub
@Betty Cracker:
grain elevator explosions are from grain dust =approx= flour.
catclub
@Lyrebird:
wow, impressive preparations! Hope you never need them.
RAM
Flour is EXTREMELY explosive stuff. Grain elevators where they grind wheat into flour explode relatively frequently. Nowadays, of course, farmers don’t haul their grain to the elevator to get it ground into flour like they did when I was a kid, so there’s a lot less of that going on. But tossing flour on a fire is like throwing gasoline on it.
catclub
@Roger Moore:
Sounds like you have been reading the ‘things I will not work with’ chemistry blog.
Fair Economist
@O. Felix Culpa: I’m so sorry to hear that. I had a semi blow through a red light right in front of me just like that a few weeks ago (but fortunately before I started forward much) when I was visiting my mother. I was pretty frightened, and a little shocked because IME truck drivers are usually pretty good. Makes me wonder if that is changing.
eclare
@O. Felix Culpa: Oh I’m so sorry
Ohio Mom
When we were in the early years of elementary school, my brother and I decided to make our mom breakfast in bed. We had a china plate with paper towels next to the bacon pan for the cooked bacon to drain on. It was a gas stove and the paper towels were a little too close to the flame.
Instead of triumphantly strolling into her bedroom with a tray full of food, we ran in shouting, THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE!
She jumped out of bed, ran into the kitchen, assessed the situation, picked up the plate by the edge furthest from the flames, and put it in the sink. The paper towels hadn’t had any bacon on them so the water from the kitchen tap was enough to put out the fire.
Then she made us promise to never, ever prepare another meal for her under any circumstances, and she went back to bed.
It is only in my own motherhood that I have grown to appreciate my mother’s nerves of steel. Unfortunately, I did not inherit them.
The Pale Scot
All this demonstrates the importance of Zinc Oxide in our lives
PSA Zinc Oxide
from The Kentucky Fried Movie
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: A big overturned pot like a Dutch oven works if the burning object is too big for a pot lid.
manyakitty
@O. Felix Culpa: What awful news! I’m so sorry.
O. Felix Culpa
@Fair Economist: How fortunate that the truck missed you! I’m reminded not to take it for granted that vehicles will actually stop for red lights.
@eclare: @manyakitty: Thank you both.
Miss Bianca
@O. Felix Culpa: Oh, that is just terrible. So sorry to hear it.
Cermet
I used salt many times and it works fine;however, I like the baking soda and that appears far better from what I have read here. Flour!? That is not only flammable but an explosive hazard! Yikes!
steverinoCT
@SP:
In the 80s I was on shore duty at a training school, and at one end of the building was the “smoking pad”, an outdoor patio with about a dozen 5-gal containers half-full of sand to use as butt-kits. There were also some vending machines for soda and candy, and despite the available garbage cans the butt-kits would fill with wrappers. Inevitably one of them caught fire, and the watch sounded the alarm. I came rushing out, and there was this flaming can, out in the open, surrounded by panicked young trainees. And a dozen buckets of sand. Lift with the legs, not with the back: the fire is out. In their defense, until they are really trained they are supposed to leave the fire-fighting to the professionals, but even so that was sad.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Betty Cracker:
BUH?
I mean… ahem.
As you should probably realize, flour is a finely ground plant material and, like most plant materials, is flammable. It’s not super-flammable – you wouldn’t put it in a tinderbox! – but it will certainly burn.
The idea of using flour on a fire flabbergasts me. WHY?
I don’t mean that in an insulting way. I mean, what on earth would possess anyone to think of such a thing? Water,
pause.
WATER WILL NOT DOUSE THE FLAMES AND WILL BOIL, POSSIBLY SPLASHING FLAMING OIL ALL AROUND!
unpause
Water, although the wrong answer, at least has reasoning behind it. If you’re used to wood fires, you know you can douse them with water.
But flour is like… hm.
Douglas Adams had a bit that went something like “when you’re driving your car in the passing lane and have blown past a few people, and are feeling pretty good about yourself, and instead of downshifting to third, shift into reverse, causing your engine to fly out of your car in an ugly mess, you get taken aback in much the say way…” …that I do, hearing people talking about flour and fires.
The only thing I can even *imagine* is people saw – oh, I dunno, Gone in 60 Seconds has a kitchen fire scene – someone on TV or in the movies dump white powder on the flames, and they assumed it had to be flour.
(caps for emphasis, not shouting.) THAT WAS BAKING SODA. Okay? BAKING SODA!
Not flour; not sugar; not salt (though salt at least will do less damage than the previous two), not OMG-how-much-did-that-cost cocaine.
Folks, *everyone* knows that flour can burn – like, you can turn bread into charcoal in the toaster, right? Okay, if it can burn *slowly*, then, when it’s in fine powder form, it can burn more quickly. So no, that’s a really bad idea, and I hope you all *know* this and are just realizing you did (well – I imagine you’re all sighing in exasperation at some long-winded weirdo you met on the internet).
Baking soda can smother the fire. And if you don’t know that, at least remember that you never put something that burns on a fire. At best, flammables added to a fire are more fuel. At worst, you could win a Darwin award, or possibly spend a large chunk of your life wishing you had.