Department of Information and Tourism, Taipei City Government

According to statistics from the fire department, careless cooking is the leading cause of fires in recent years. Most commonly, people leave while simmering food, boiling soup, answering the phone, or temporarily doing other things. However, if the stove continues to burn, it may eventually lead to fire accidents. Therefore, when using a stove, please remember the principle of "fire off when being away". As long as you leave the fire source, turn off the gas first to avoid unfortunate incidents .

However, it is worth noting that people tend to neglect regularly cleaning kitchen exhaust pipes. Long-term use of these pipes can easily lead to the accumulation of a large amount of grease. The cooking flame may ignite the grease and cause a fire to spread. Even though the exhaust pipes used in households are relatively short and route directly to the outdoors, which might cause fewer losses in the event of a fire, still the risk shouldn’t be ignored. As for commercial kitchens, the exhaust pipes are longer and run through ceilings or floors. Once the grease inside ignites, it is difficult to extinguish, leading to rapid expansion of fire and hence severe losses. Such fire happened most commonly in barbecue restaurants,which constantly produce heavy smoke and grease, followed by deep-frying shops and stir-frying restaurants.

The fire department urges regular inspection of kitchen exhaust pipes in both household and commercial kitchen. Once grease accumulation is found inside, it must be cleaned immediately. In addition, commercial kitchens can install a "simple automatic fire extinguishing device" on the exhaust pipes and hoods to automatically extinguish fires in the early stages, preventing the fire from spreading. Furthermore, gas stoves with the "flame-out safety device" feature are suggested. The devices detect when the stove flames are extinguished and can automatically cuts off the gas to prevent continuous leakage, effectively avoiding potential incidents caused by careless cooking.