The Fire Service warns against fan ovens: – should not be left unattended

Freestanding stoves should never be switched off while you sleep – and should never be in children’s rooms, the fire service warns.

The temperature is creeping down the scale, and it’s tempting to buy heaters that can be placed in any room to heat up the cold house.

After a fan oven caught fire in Dansberg on Sunday night, the fire service is warning that such an oven should not be left completely unattended.

– We don’t know why the fan oven caught fire, but portable ovens often catch fire, the fire service writes on Twitter/X on Sunday morning.

The fire service says the safest thing to do is to have a sufficient number of constant heat sources to meet heating needs.

– We recommend never having free-standing stoves while you sleep, and never in children’s rooms, they write,

– Freestanding heaters are considered ancillary to main heating and should not be left unattended. They write that if you have to use extra stoves, you should be on alert so that action is taken if something happens.

According to the fire service, the main causes of fan oven fires are:

• Domestic animals such as cats or dogs significantly increase the risk (the fire service did not explain why, but we can assume it was due to overturning).
• An incandescent oven can overheat or overheat for a variety of reasons. It is not 100% guaranteed that built-in security functions will work.
• Stoves can malfunction and become very hot, igniting the floor or nearby objects.
• Oil-filled furnaces can leak flammable oil.
• Common to all these stoves is that they may be covered or stand too close to flammable materials.
• Heat build-up in an extension cord can cause a fire. A rule of thumb is to not plug appliances that use more than 1000 watts into an extension cord.

– The fire service points out that if you are awake, you can act quickly.

Fortunately, no one was injured in Sunday night’s incident in Tønsberg:

– The resident was asleep but responded with determination when the fire was discovered and was able to extinguish it with water. The man then moved the fan stove out of the building so the situation was resolved before we arrived on site.