Park Service Fire Prevention Week 2023: Cooking Safety at Home

Park Service fire staff at the signing, National Interagency Fire Center, 2023: Chris Wilcox, Roberta Gorman, Mike Schell and Shane Crutcher. Photo by Candice Stevenson, NPS.

Fire Prevention Week

Every October since 1922, the National Fire Protection Association has held Fire Prevention Week to teach the public about fire and life safety. The timing marks the Great Chicago Fire, which began on October 8, 1871, killed more than 250 people, left 100,000 homeless, destroyed more than 17,400 structures and burned more than 2,000 acres.

In 2023 the week ran October 8–14, and the Park Service's Structural Fire Program focused on the year's theme: cooking safety.

Park Service Director Chuck Sams on Fire Prevention Week 2023. NPS film.

The proclamation

On September 18, at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, Christopher Wilcox, chief of the Park Service's Division of Fire and Aviation Management, and Shane Crutcher, its structural fire branch chief, signed a proclamation declaring Fire Prevention Week across the National Park Service.

The Park Service, Crutcher noted, has plenty of room to improve home fire safety: it runs many overnight accommodations, and many employees live inside park boundaries. He stressed the commitment of the service's structural fire coordinators and firefighters to preventing fires and injuries through education.

Chris Wilcox and Shane Crutcher sign the 2023 proclamation. Photo by Candice Stevenson, NPS.

The numbers behind it

Figures cited from the National Fire Protection Association:

• Home fires caused more than 2,800 civilian deaths in the U.S. in 2021, and fire departments responded to more than 338,000 of them.
• Cooking is the leading cause of home fires — more than 166,400 a year in 2016–2020.
• Two in five home fires start in the kitchen, and 31% of those come from unattended cooking.
• More than half of non-fatal home cooking injuries happen when people try to fight the fire themselves.
• Children under five are more likely to suffer non-fire burns from cooking than to be burned in a cooking fire.
• Working smoke alarms cut the risk of dying in a reported home fire almost in half.

Safe cooking

The proclamation urges park employees and visitors to:

• turn pot handles toward the back of the stove;
• keep a lid nearby while cooking;
• keep a three-foot kid-free zone around the stove, oven and anything else that gets hot;
• watch what they heat, and set a timer as a reminder that something is cooking;
• plan and practice a home escape plan, which makes surviving a fire more likely;
• check kitchens for fire hazards, and support the Park Service's fire and emergency services.

Sources

Based on "National Park Service Structural Fire Program kicks off Fire Prevention Week 2023," National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The Park Service's film, lost when the page was imported, is restored from its page (2026-09-27).