News · Sterling Heights
Sterling Heights tests stove burners that can’t get hot enough to start a grease fire, at an apartment complex with three fires in two years
STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. — Sterling Heights firefighters are trying to stop kitchen fires at the source: the stove. This week they began replacing ordinary electric coils at Fieldstone Apartments on Stonegate Drive with burners built so they never get hot enough to set a pan of oil or food on fire.
About 100 tenants at the complex are getting the burners at no cost to them, WXYZ-TV reported Tuesday, Oct. 27. The fire department plans to watch the complex for at least a year to see whether the swap cuts down on fires.
“One of the greatest risks we see is cooking fires,” Interim Fire Chief Michael Amormino told the station, calling them one of the leading causes of home fires.
Why this complex. From 2018 to 2025, 31% of cooking fires in Sterling Heights happened in multifamily buildings, according to the fire department, and it flagged Fieldstone as a high-risk property. Property manager Brittany Westson said the complex has had three fires in the past two years. In an apartment building, one unattended pan can put the neighbors at risk too, a point resident Catherine Romano made to WXYZ: “You’re not only responsible for what’s going on in your apartment, but also someone else’s.”
How the burners work. The SmartBurner, made by Pioneering Technology, replaces a standard stove coil. A thermostat inside limits how hot the cooking surface can get, so the contents of a pan stay below the point where they would ignite on their own, company executive vice president Will Boake explained. Firefighters and Fieldstone maintenance staff began the installations Tuesday.
Boake said Sterling Heights is one of three sites in the country taking part in the 2026 Cooking Fire Prevention Toolkit initiative, which is supported by FEMA. Fire Marshal Tracy Davis called the pilot a chance to put a “proactive approach into practice for residents.”
Officials pointed to a Massachusetts fire department that began a similar effort in 2015 with help from a FEMA grant. Kymberly Pashkowsky of the Michigan Bureau of Fire Services told WXYZ that program “still reports zero cooking fires” more than a decade later.
Why it matters beyond one complex. Cooking is the leading cause of reported home fires in the United States. Kitchen and cooking equipment was involved in an estimated 48% of home structure fires and 35% of home fire injuries each year from 2020 to 2024, according to the National Fire Protection Association. Ranges and cooktops account for just over half of home cooking fires, and unattended cooking is a factor in a quarter of them and half of the deaths.
The timing is useful. The NFPA says Thanksgiving is the peak day of the year for home cooking fires, followed by Christmas Day and Christmas Eve.
What any household can do now. The burners fit electric coil stoves and are sold to consumers online and at stores such as Home Depot, WXYZ reported, but no gadget replaces paying attention. The NFPA’s basic rules: stay in the kitchen while frying, grilling, boiling or broiling; keep towels, oven mitts and packaging away from the burners; keep a lid nearby and slide it over a pan that catches fire, then turn off the heat; never throw water on a grease fire; and for an oven fire, turn off the heat and keep the door shut. If a fire doesn’t go out right away, get everyone outside and call 911 from there.
Sources:
WXYZ-TV, “Sterling Heights launches cooking fire prevention pilot during Fire Prevention Month,” Oct. 27, 2026 (Amormino, Westson, Romano, Boake, Davis and Pashkowsky quotes; 31% figure; 100 tenants; one-year monitoring), https://www.wxyz.com/sterling-heights-launches-cooking-fire-prevention-pilot-during-fire-prevention-month
National Fire Protection Association, “Cooking Safety” (2020–2024 statistics, Thanksgiving peak, safety tips), https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/home-fire-safety/cooking
Photo: SteveStrummer, “Dexter Michigan Fire Dept 2015.JPG,” July 25, 2015, Wikimedia Commons, CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/), cropped and color-adjusted, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dexter_Michigan_Fire_Dept_2015.JPG
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