A Tuesday night hotdog barbecue nearly turned to tragedy last month, when Julie Hill looked outside and saw 5-foot flames spewing from her family’s gas grill.
“The whole thing was engulfed in flames on the outside,” recalled Hill, 33, of Broadview Heights, Ohio. “The knobs melted off, the shelf melted off.”
A friend emptied a kitchen fire extinguisher on the blaze, but the flames still flared. With her kids, ages 2 and 5, safely shooed away, Hill called 911 and, on the dispatcher’s advice, waited until the fire died back and then reached in to shut off the propane.
“I’m so glad that no one got hurt and that we caught it before the tank blew up,” said Hill, who thinks that the fire was sparked by a loose or melted propane hose. “It could have been a lot worse.”
Indeed, it could have. As the Fourth of July holiday shifts barbecue season into high gear, doctors and fire officials warn that grilling accidents can have serious, even deadly, consequences.
I don't leave the grill when it is going, but my neighbors do and it is right up against their house. Last week we smelled something burning and looked out and there they were just coming out of the house to find flames shooting from the grill. Damn lucky the whole house didn't go up.
