Knoxville woman cooking brisket in bathtub starts fire

Firefighters didn't have to reach for an extinguisher when they were called to a cooking fire at a North Knoxville apartment this week.

They simply turned on the shower head.

In what Knoxville Fire Department Capt. D.J. Corcoran called "a first in our books," a woman attempted to cook a brisket over an open flame in her bathtub, he said.

Fire crews responded Monday evening to 4834 Scheel Road to find the middle-aged woman fanning light smoke from her apartment. Inside, they found a melting fiberglass tub in the bathroom, he said.

The resident had lit a small, wood-burning grill inside the bathtub, with the meat placed on a wire rack across the tub's rim. The heat soon melted the fiberglass underneath.

"The tub and the brisket were a total loss," Corcoran said.

The apartment below also suffered some minor water damage.

The fire captain highlighted the incident to stress that more than 50 percent of all residential fires are cooking-related.

"With that said," Corcoran noted, "most all of those documented fires are in the kitchen."

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/local/kfd-woman-cooking-brisket-in-bathtub-starts-fire-378604e4-2af7-35a8-e053-0100007f31f5-386654351.html