Is everyone coming to your house tomorrow?

Cooking a lot of food for a lot of people can be tough and dangerous.

It may not surprise you that on average there are three times the number of kitchen fires on Thanksgiving than on any other day of the year.

The sound of ovens turning on is one that will echo across millions of kitchens tomorrow as families gather for the Thanksgiving feast as the master chef of the household prepares the meal in the kitchen.

Nevertheless, it can all potentially spell a recipe for disaster.

Northwest Fire Captain Adam Goldberg reveals, “So here we are, Thanksgiving. People have, when do they need to cook this? When do they need to cook that? Who’s coming over and so the guard is let down.”

Goldberg says that results in roughly 1,300 kitchen fires nationally on turkey day, almost three times the daily average.

“So in an annual year, we see roughly a billion dollars in damage, in cooking fires and kitchen fires on Thanksgiving Day, specifically,” Goldberg explains.

Firefighters suggest having a fire extinguisher handy, which is an excellent tool for putting out small fires.

Also, as we bring things out of the oven, we have a tendency to put our hot items down and then just drop our things down. Setting them down too close to a common combustible or too close to a burner starts a fire, which can potentially spread upwards and burn your kitchen.

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If a fire were to ignite, Goldberg suggests, “The best thing to do with a cooking or grease fire is to cover it or something with a lid or another pan or having your extinguisher in the home.”

These are important things to be mindful of on a day where family and friends and happiness could all be ruined with a mistake in the kitchen.

Other things firefighters say to keep in mind tomorrow is to turn burners off when they are not in use and to keep knives away from the edge of counters to prevent injuries to children.