A cooking fire in North Bay on Monday has left a significant amount of damage at a townhome in the West Ferris area of the city.
Fire crews say they are seeing these grease fires far too often, and are now reminding people how to avoid them.
North Bay fire officials say the number of cooking fires they see around the community in a year is startling.
In the past couple of weeks, Deputy Chief Mike Bechard says crews responded to three cooking related fires where appliances have been left unattended or overheated.
"Usually when we go to grease fires, one thing we deal with is something has overheated the grease. It's got to the point where it's hit the auto-ignition temperature and it's going to start to flash. How to prevent them is to use a commercially designed deep fryer." said Bechard.
North Bay Fire says it responded Monday to a blaze around five pm, on Manitou Street resulting from a cooking fire.
A person living in the home says he placed a pot of oil on the stove to heat and cook French fries.
Fire crews say a man and children were able to escape the home safely and crews were able to limit the damage to only the one unit.
Now Bechard is reminding people what they should do in the event you have a grease fire.
"Don't move it, don't touch it. You're going to get burned, that's going to leave a nasty burn. The temperature of the grease is pretty high, but you know what you can do to stop the fire quickly, is put a lid on it." said Bechard.
Fire officials say if there is a fire, people should turn the element off and then quickly slide a lid over it to stop oxygen from getting to the flames.
