Coincidentally,
yesterday, while I was waiting for my Allergy Shots, one of the other patients waiting was relating her story of how she burnt her kitchen up last week.
Apparently, she was making Tortilla Chips, and she left the pan of oil on her electric stove and went into the other room to watch TV! The next thing she knew her dog was barking and waking her up. The smoke alarm was sounding, but it was the dog that woke her! She said the house was filled with smoke and her electric stove was toast and the kitchen cabinets damaged. I would guess that she was between 70 to 75 years old, certainly old enough to know that you NEVER leave a pan of oil or grease unattended on a live stove burner. She still didn’t seem to grasp this point, even after the near miss with death she just experienced!
We live in a 20 unit townhouse HOA, three buildings, two of them have 6 attached units, our building has 8 attached units. On Academy Awards night in 1997 one of the residents in the first building did this same thing while making french fries, left the oil unattended and the fire destroyed the entire downstairs of his unit, he luckily escaped death. But since he already had COPD, his lungs were severly damaged.
The brain dead negligence of many people sends chills up my spine. So while I’m not crazy about this new safety regulation, perhaps in light of how nonchalant some people are about safety personally, this may be a good idea that will save countless lives.
BTW, don’t flat top electric stoves already have these kinds of limit switches on the burners? I’ve owned two of them in the past and I noticed that the burners would cycle on and off on high while boiling a large pot of water, but even so they were only maybe two mins slower than a coil top in getting 6 to 8 quarts of water to a rolling boil.
Eddie