Some restaurant owners may wonder why cleaning their vent hoods and keeping their exhaust ducts clean is so important. An incident from late last week helps illustrate why.
According to the account in the Vicksburg Post, a Burger King in Mississippi caught fire and damaged the kitchen rather badly (the restaurant is closed until repairs are completed). It started when an employee was cleaning grease from one of the stoves when the grease caught fire. This part is worth noting:
Vicksburg Fire Chief Craig Danczyk said…the fire managed to get in the vent fan and duct work in the kitchen, adding greasy residue from the kitchen helped the fire expand into the ceiling and roof areas. Firefighters had to get on the building’s roof to get to the fire after it entered the ductwork. (emphasis added)
This is why cleaning your restaurant ventilation is so important. All that grease from the stove doesn’t stay on the stove – some of it also gets sucked up into the ventilation system, into the ducts and onto the fan itself. If your ventilation system isn’t cleaned regularly as required by state law,
It could have been really extensive in the case of this Burger King restaurant. Do the math: many fast food restaurants open at 6:00 am or earlier, and don’t close until 10:00 pm or later. That kitchen could easily have been running 16 hours per day, and maybe more. That makes for a lot of grease getting pulled up into that ventilation system. And as illustrated, it doesn’t take much for a grease fire to spread rapidly.
(As a side note, we aren’t saying they failed to have their ventilation system cleaned properly – the article doesn’t say one way or the other, and it would be pure speculation on our part. We’re just saying that it’s critical to have your restaurant ventilation system cleaned regularly.)
Here’s the bottom line: a poorly cleaned restaurant ventilation system is a fire hazard. Left unaddressed, it can cause tremendous damage and even fatalities. If yours is in need of cleaning, we can help! Contact us today for a quote.