Crisco inferno?
A Connecticut woman is lucky to be alive after a half-baked attempt to extinguish a grease fire literally blew up in her face, as seen in this video setting the internet ablaze.
“This is exactly what you SHOULD NOT DO,” warned LaTeasha Brost in the caption to the clip, which boasts over 6.2 million views on TikTok.
In the viral footage, the TikToker is seen cooking in her kitchen, when all of a sudden, a fire erupts in the pan.
“What do I do?” cries the petrified Brost, who decides to try and douse the blaze with water.
Unfortunately, this backfires horribly, creating a giant fireball. Terrified, Brost flees to the living room and chucks the flaming pot, which nearly hits her dog, before she trips and falls in the living room.
Thankfully, the fire appeared to go out on its own.
Why did the water paradoxically act as an accelerant? As Brost pointed out, the inferno was an oil-based blaze, Yahoo News reported. When water is combined with grease, it sinks beneath the less-dense oil, pushing the grease to the surface.
This water then rapidly heats and vaporizes, propelling the flaming top layer of oil into the air and creating a flaming greaseball.
Thankfully, Brost said there was no “apartment damage” and that she only sustained second-degree burns in the freak accident.
She said she hopes that sharing the video will help prevent others from making the “same mistake.”
“It’s okay if you laugh,” she added. “This is your sign to get a fire extinguisher or fire blanket in your kitchen … We didn’t know what to do and although we are very embarrassed, we hope people can learn from this so they don’t make the same mistake as we did.”
Social media had a field day with the flaming fiasco.
“The accidental stop drop and roll is insane,” exclaimed one bemused viewer, while another wrote, “not you almost throwing the fire ON your dog.”
Brost clarified in the comments that she chucked the pan because it was burning her skin.
“The important thing is that you didn’t panic,” snarked one TikTok wit.
“Friendly reminder not to add water to a grease fire,” advised one social media Samaritan.
In the event of a grease fire, people are advised to turn off the stove and cover the pot with a non-glass lid or other pot to starve the flames of oxygen, ABC 27 reported.
Failing that, one should try and put it out with an extinguisher or call 911 if the fire’s raging out of control.
