National Fire Prevention Week Raising Awareness for Cooking Fires, Kitchen Safety.

It’s National Fire Prevention Week – with this year’s theme encouraging people to “Serve Up Fire Safety in the Kitchen”.

Fond du Lac Fire and Rescue Division Chief Garth Schumacher tells KFIZ News that cooking is the leading cause of fires in the home, and often those fires are caused by leaving something unattended in the kitchen.

“I think all of us have been guilty of it at some point in our lives – we’ll start cooking something, whether its something in the oven or on top of the stove or in the toaster – and we get sidetracked, we walk away or ‘I’m going to go take my morning medicine and then come back’, and you get sidetracked, you forget, and the next thing you know you have a little bit of an accident going on,” Schumacher said.

He adds that it’s important to make sure kids are kept at least three feet away from the stove while it is in use to prevent them from being burned. To learn more about National Fire Prevention Week, click here.