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14 | InTouch AUTUMN 2023 A lucky escape! UNDERSTAND YOUR FIRE RISK, INSTALL AND MAINTAIN SMOKE ALARMS, PLAN YOUR ESCAPE, DON’T ISOLATE YOURSELF Denise Ganley shares her first-hand experience with fire and how it pays to be prepared! FEATURE Not long before Christmas we had a traumatic experience with a kitchen fire which potentially could have become quite serious. My daughter was preparing dinner and had some oil in a lidded saucepan heating on the gas hob. She was about to add chicken to it when the pot exploded in a fire ball and instantly filled the kitchen with thick black smoke. We rushed to try and cover the pot again as the lid had blown off, but it was quickly apparent that the fire was too large for that to work. Thankfully we had a fire extinguisher in the kitchen along with others in the garage, so my two daughters emptied these onto the hob and called 111 for the Fire Service. Fire and smoke damage to Denise’s kitchen. The firemen were full of praise for my girls acting so quickly and decisively with the fire extinguishers and said that it would have been much worse if they hadn’t done this.