Duluth fire department warns kitchen habits can prevent home fires

A pan left alone in a Duluth kitchen can turn into a house fire fast, and state data show the risk is not rare. Minnesota officials say unattended cooking is typically the leading cause of house fires each year, with an average of 120 residential fires annually tied to that mistake.

The Duluth Fire Department used a recent public-safety advisory to press a simple message: stay in the kitchen while cooking, keep combustible items at least 12 inches from the cooktop, and keep a proper fire extinguisher close by. The department also warned that modern appliances such as air fryers, electric frying pans and crockpots can become hazards if they are left on a cooktop or if plastic parts ignite. Ovens should not be used for storage, the department said, because pans, boxes and towels can be forgotten inside and then catch when the appliance is turned on.

Those reminders matter because cooking fires can spread quickly to cabinets, walls and other parts of a home, creating expensive damage or forcing a family out of its house. In Duluth, where older housing stock and multi-unit buildings can make smoke and flames travel beyond one unit, even a small kitchen fire can create neighborhood-level consequences.

The department’s advice also covered the basics that still stop many emergencies from getting worse: turn off the stove if you leave the room, slide a tight-fitting lid over a pan fire, avoid loose clothing and keep phones and other distractions away from the stove. That warning lines up with national fire data. The National Fire Protection Association says cooking caused an average of 158,400 reported home structure fires a year from 2017 through 2021, equal to 44% of all reported home fires in the United States. Ranges or cooktops were involved in 53% of those fires, 88% of the deaths and 74% of the injuries.

The same national data help explain why firefighters focus so heavily on clothing and grease. Clothing is first ignited in less than 1% of home cooking fires, but it accounted for 4% of home cooking fire deaths. The NFPA also says Thanksgiving is the peak day for home cooking fires, followed by Christmas Day and Christmas Eve.

Minnesota’s 2024 Fire in Minnesota report said unattended cooking, especially on stovetops and involving cooking oil or grease, remains a leading cause of home fires in the state. The Duluth Fire Department’s prevention push, posted by the City of Duluth on June 4, fit squarely with that pattern and with the department’s role in fire prevention and public education, not just emergency response.