New stovetops aim to prevent cooking ?res

While they can’t guarantee that you won’t overcook your dinner, campus officials are working to make sure your stove doesn’t burn down the entire building.

The Department of Environment, Health and Safety has begun implementation of project Safe-T-element, an endeavor to limit cooking-related fires at UNC.

Officials will install 557 cast iron, temperature-regulated plates on stoves in some campus residence halls. The new stovetops are being funded by a $221,018 grant through the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The plates will lower the maximum temperature of the stove coils to 662 degrees Fahrenheit to prevent overheating and fires. The temperature at which most combustible materials tend to ignite is 698 degrees Fahrenheit.

Cooking-related fires are a frequent fire safety problem on campus, accounting for 330 of the total 1,073 fire-related calls made from UNC in 2008.

Chapel Hill Fire Marshal Matt Lawrence said the installation of these plates is not because of recent campus incidents, including two fires on Nov. 16 at Ram Village and Hinton James Residence Hall.

The plans to install the stovetops were made before those fires happened, Lawrence said.

The fire occurred at an apartment where the Safe-T top elements had not yet been installed.

Baity Hill apartments are the primary location of the installations. Because these apartments provide family housing, this is where a large portion of the cooking occurs at UNC, said Rick Bradley, assistant director of the Department of Housing and Residential Education. Some plates will also be put in at Ram Village apartments.

If the Safe-T tops prove to be successful in reducing the number of fires, they might be installed at other parts of campus as well, said Kitty Lynn, the fire safety professional from the Department of Environment, Health and Safety.

“There is talk of making room in the budget for more Safe-T top elements because we like them so much,” Lynn said. “We’ve also thought about installing them in Horton, Koury, Hardin and Craige North in the future.”

The FEMA grant will also cover a five-year educational effort to train students in fire safety, which will include printing and distributing a brochure on cooking safety.

The installation of these elements is expected to be completed by Tuesday, with an estimated 40 to 50 stoves being installed per day.



Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.