The Scary Risk of Unattended Cooking and Home Fires
Cooking fires are the leading cause of home fires and home fire-related injuries. Not only can they cause thousands of dollars of property damage by setting your house on fire, but there is also the scarier risk of causing burn injuries or even death to your family or neighbors. Kitchen fire safety is a serious issue; home fires start in the kitchen more often than any other area in the home.
Unattended cooking is a leading cause of fire-related accidents taking place in homes around the world. In today’s busy world, it’s easy to get distracted by situations that grab your attention away from cooking for longer than intended. Upon returning, there could be an open flame causing smoke to fill the kitchen with your smoke detector (hopefully) going off. Please remember never to use water to put out a stove fire and always store a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. A stove fire most likely involves overheated oil or grease and using water will escalate the problem.
In 2016, cooking fires accounted for around 630,000 reported residential fires. This resulted in approximately 700 deaths and 6,500 injuries, according to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). Add property damage worth $3.7 billion annually, and you start to realize how important it is to stop home fires involving cooking equipment.
- Cooking equipment is the leading cause of home fire occurrence, accounting for 47% of the total reported home fires.
- 630,000 cooking equipment induced home fires caused nearly 700 civilian deaths, 6,500 injuries, and property damage worth $3.7 billion on an average every year.
- Unattended cooking equipment causes 47% of the kitchen fires, 20% of the civilian deaths, and 45% of the injuries.
- Electric stoves have a 2.5 times higher risk of causing a fire compared to gas stoves.
- United States fire departments respond to a home fire every 24 seconds.
- Older adults have a higher risk of cooking fire deaths than other age groups. 56% of the victims are more than 55 years of age in cooking fire deaths.
- Cooking fires peak on holidays; for example, you are four times more likely to have a cooking fire on Thanksgiving than any other day.
- NFPA reports that 55% of the non-fatal home cooking fire injuries happened when the victims tried to fight the fire themselves.
But could all this have been avoided in the first place?
It’s evident from the above statistics that there’s a higher probability of home fire accidents occurring from “unattended cooking equipment,” “electric ranges, stoves and ovens,” and “older adults.” There is little doubt that fire prevention is the best cure. Therefore, we must prevent these cooking-related fires before they ever occur, which is the core design goal of the Wallflower Smart Monitor for electric stoves, ovens, and ranges.
What is the Wallflower Smart Monitor?
The Wallflower Smart Monitor is a combination of a Mobile App and a 250V/50A high-power rated ETL/Intertek certified and safety tested smart plug which takes just 5 minutes to install. The Wallflower device lets you remotely monitor any plug-in electric stove using any iOS or Android smartphone and automatically alerts you if you forget to turn it off. The Wallflower Smart Monitor is a connected-home technology solution that helps you avoid the leading cause of home fires. It monitors your stove 24 hours a day and protects your family, loved ones, and home from the most dangerous appliance in your house. All you need to do is plug in your stove, download the app (available for both Android and iOS), and then you will get notified when you forget to turn the stove off or you leave your home with the stove still on.
Why do you need the Wallflower Smart Monitor for Kitchen Fire Safety?
Home fires caused by cooking equipment can cause significant damage to your property and increase the risk of injury or death to your loved ones. Almost everyone forgets to turn off the stove and you never know when you will do the same. Wallflower’s Smart Monitor for electric stoves will help you reduce the chance of forgetting that you are still cooking. Wallflower, once installed, monitors your stove 24/7 and notifies you with a beep and a notification on your smartphone that you forgot to turn off your stove. It promotes a safer home environment and helps prevent kitchen fires from occurring. If you want to reduce the risk of cooking fires happening in your home and increase security for your loved ones, you need a Wallflower Smart Monitor.
Features of the Wallflower Smart Monitor:
- Very easy to onboard and setup– it takes just 5 minutes to complete the installation – no tools are required.
- Works with 3-wire and 4-wire electric stove plugs (two models available).
- Designed to fit behind the cavity present in most electric stoves.
- High-power 250V/50A rated smart plug that is safety tested and certified by ETL/Intertek.
- Built-in smart algorithms that learn your cooking behavior to warn you in case the stove is still on outside of your normal cooking behavior.
- The Smart Monitor sounds an audible alert behind the stove in addition to the notification your smartphone receives.
- Supports multiple users with the ability to configure smartphone notifications for each user.
- Built-in GPS geofencing that enables the Smart Monitor to alert your smartphone if you leave home with the stove still turned on.
- Compatible with Amazon Alexa: the Wallflower skill set lets you use your voice to set a cooking timer, ask if your stove is on, or tell the family that dinner is ready (among other features).
- Monitor multiple stoves or homes with a single app. Convenient if you are a caregiver, landlord, Airbnb host, or just want to keep an eye on someone else’s residence.
- A very handy Cooking Timer in the app that sends you a notification when your food is cooked and simultaneously plays a beep on the device to let you know when your food is ready.
The safety of your home and loved ones is important, and you just can’t afford to ignore it. Even small preventive measures can avoid substantial property damage or, even worse, injury or loss of life. Wallflower’s Smart Monitor for electric plug-in stoves warns you to take action before a disaster can occur.
It’s time to get the latest smart stove technology developed by Wallflower Labs and start protecting your home and family from kitchen fires.
Get The Wallflower Smart Monitor
