Your grilling safety checklist

STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI)- Memorial Day is coming to a close but the grills will stay open all summer. Whether you prefer gas or charcoal, you need to be safe when operating a grill. Grilling safety may seem simple but you’d be surprised by what the Starkville Fire Department has seen over the years.

WCBI reached out to Starkville Fire Chief Charles Yarbrough to find out how you can enjoy your cook-out, and prevent his department from making any trips to your home.

Grilling safety may seem simple but you’d be surprised by what the Starkville Fire Department has seen over the years.

“Never do a gas grill inside the house,” said Chief Yarbough. “People might not know that but we’ve had a couple of instances where people actually had the gas grill inside their house.”

Okay, don’t grill inside the house. Check.

What’s next?

“If you’re outside with a gas grill, it’s like a stove. You never leave it unattended.”

Eyes on the grill. Got it.

What about getting the grill started?

“When you’re lighting it, make sure you’re a safe distance from it. Never use kerosene or gasoline to light a grill.”

Understandable. Anything else?

“Also with gas grills, you want to make sure that when you do light it, you have everything opened up. You don’t want to light it with the top being closed. The gas may be trapped and you may have an explosion.”

So we know how to safely light up a grill but what about disposing of our charcoal?

“Our biggest thing that we deal with so the disposal of the charcoal. In ’95 we had an incident where people poured it into a trash can and actually burned up a storage room. So be very careful how you dispose of them. Make sure they’re completely out before you dispose of them. When you do dispose of them it needs to be in a metal container. So that’s some of the cautions we have to worry about and something we need to be cognisant of this summer.”