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Risk Management
900 Grant Street
Room 302
Denver, CO  80203
Phone: 720-423-3613
Fax: 720-423-3229



  
     

The Pitfalls of Popcorn

A Fire Safety Story 

I would like to share a story from a friend in another town.     

It all starts late one afternoon when someone at work gets hungry and grabs a bag of microwave popcorn out of their desk. They go to the break room, put the bag in the microwave, 3 minutes sounds about right, and leave the room for a few minutes. When they come back to the break room a few minutes later, it is full of smoke! Time to evacuate the building!  Of course it is snowing outside, and we have 100 cold, unhappy campers waiting while the smoke is vented out of the building.

So what went wrong? Three things really:

  1. The label on the bag of popcorn said, "Use by July 27, 2002". Because it was so old, the kernals would not pop correctly.
  2. The microwave being used is new and it will cook a bag of popcorn in 1 minute, 25 seconds. Please note that the bag was left in the microwave for 3 minutes, way too long!!!!
  3. The person left the room while it was popping.

In the end, this bag of old popcorn being popped for too long in a new microwave caused over $2,000 in damage (e.g., the microwave was destroyed, all the ceiling tiles had to be replaced, and a thorough cleaning was needed).

Pazi Podium Smaller Image:     

Pazi's Popcorn Tip:  STAY BY THE MICROWAVE!

 

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This page was last updated: Thursday, April 5, 2007 at 2:46:05 PM

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