Firefighters in Seoul, South Korea, issued an at least unusual warning on the eve of the New Year: cats were found guilty of at least 107 fires in the city that occurred between January 2019 and November 2021.
According to the Seoul Metropolitan Fire and Disaster Department, in 52 cases the fire started when pet owners were not at home. Among the most frequent incidents are those linked to induction electric stoves.
Although it is considered safer than traditional models precisely because it does not produce a fire, the induction stove, according to firefighters, can be accidentally started by a cat. And every feline owner knows that there is no space in the house that is unreachable for a cat—unless specific steps are taken to do so, of course.
Thus, even without burning flames, a kitten’s adventure in the kitchen can start a fire from flammable objects left near the stove by induction. In the incidents recorded in Seoul, at least four people were injured and, in an unspecified number of cases, the pussies themselves ended up becoming victims.
“Fires started by cats continue to be reported these days,” Chung Gyo-chul, a spokesman for Seoul firefighters, told the Korea Herald. “We advise pet owners to pay extra attention as fire can spread widely when no one is home.”
The problem is not limited to South Korea. According to the Washington Post, the United States daily registers nearly three fires caused in some way by pets. The survey is by the National Fire Protection Association, which does not specify what percentage is attributed to cats.
American institutions often run awareness campaigns for fire prevention and pet protection. The Red Cross, for example, advises pet owners to remove buttons from stoves and protect them with lids whenever they leave the house.
Another tip is to change the traditional candles for battery powered models, which do not produce flames. According to the institution, it is relatively common for cats to spread fire around the house when they have their own tails accidentally ignited by a candle flame. Furthermore, the movement of the fire naturally attracts the curiosity of felines that, even without burning the house, can suffer serious injuries.
Cats, however, are not the only animals to start fires by accident. In Essex, England, two cases in the same month came to the attention of authorities. It was December 2019 when a 45-year-old turtle knocked over a heater and started the flames while the owners were away.
In the other case, a dog somehow managed to activate the microwave, where there was a piece of bread that caught fire after being exposed to several minutes of high temperatures. The flames spread through the house and, luckily, triggered an alert on the owner’s cell phone, who had installed a monitoring system. Both the turtle and the dog escaped unharmed.
But the relationship between pets and fire is not always a tragedy. In some cases, it’s the exact opposite of that. In 2017, a cat saved the family in Canada by waking its owner with bites on his arm as the flames began to spread through the house.
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