Originally Posted by Muska

We, (I'm in the fire service) would never recommend that anyone tries to tackle a fire themselves, the best thing you can possibly do is to shut the door to the room if/when its discovered and leave the house calling us. This will contain the fire to that compartment for up to 20mins (ish) and a fire that has a plentyful supply of oxygen will spread very rapidly. There is a video we show to children at schools and a fire is started on a sofa from a cooker lighter. The lounge door is open and in under 3mins the whole room is engulfed by the blaze. Smoke damage to the rest of the house would also be drastically reduced.

The brigade i work for has a campaigne to increase smoke alarm ownership and on the back of that we do things called 'home fire safety checks' safety advice and best practice information and we fit smoke alarms with a 10year battery for free also. I would recommend these to anyone as very often its simple things we encounter that can make all the difference to reducing the risk.

As fo what type of extinguisher to use, for a chip pan i would not use any extinguisher! The force that Co2/powder comes out with will splash the fat all over the place and cause the fire to spread. The damp tea towell/fire blanket is the way to deal with that. But as i said, we would never recommend someone tries to tackle something themselves. Just remember that responce time from the moment you call to the time the fire brigade arrives will be somewhere between 3-5mins maximum, the time you may waste trying to do something yourself could be the difference between losaing a little and losing alot.

I love my job so i appologise if i've rattled on and off the point of the topic.

Cheers,
Matt.