MARA H. GOTFRIED
St. Paul Pioneer Press

A wall of flames moved toward a crowd in St. Paul Monday with a loud whoosh.


Using the new "live-fire education trailer," Novak showed what can happen in a kitchen fire, the No. 1 cause of building fires in the state and nation, fire officials said.

In Novak's demonstration in the trailer, he put two pots on a stove's burners. Each pot contained cooking oil, and Novak heated both until they started on fire.

To prevent kitchen fires, Novak offers these tips:

Keep children at least three steps away from the stove.

Turn panhandles in, so children can't reach them or bump them.

Use child-safety knobs to cover stove knobs to keep kids and pets (yes, Novak said he's seen cases of this) from turning them.

Make sure you have working smoke detectors.

Keep a portable fire extinguisher near an exist to the house.

Don't leave cooking unattended.

If you have a fire in your kitchen, Novak has this advice:

Get out of the house and call 911.

If the fire is small and everyone else is out of the home: For an oven fire, turn off the oven and keep the oven door closed. For a fire on the stove, put a tight-fitting lid over the pan, turn off the burner and don't open the lid.

Never put water on a cooking oil fire.

Novak used a long pole to show what happened when he put water on the fire; that's when the flames shot up.

The new trailer will travel the state for demonstrations and will be at the Minnesota State Fair for "Governor's Fire Prevention Day" Aug. 27.

The new trailer, which the fire department says is the first of its kind in the United States, came together with $10,000 in private donations, $8,000 from the state fire marshal's office and a $15,000 federal grant.

Copyright 2010 St. Paul Pioneer Press
All Rights Reserved
August 16, 2010