Most house fires start in the kitchen, and new fire prevention products are being developed with the intention of stopping those fires at the first signs of trouble.

Cooking equipment is the leading cause of home fires and fire injuries, according to the National Fire Protection Association. A retired fire captain agreed, saying he'd seen his share of kitchen fires in his decades of service.

“A kitchen fire can be something as simple as leaving a pot on a stove,” Gabe Roder said.

Roder worked for Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services for more than 20 years, and said he'd seen kitchen fires that ranged from minor smoke damage to full destruction of a home with loss of life or serious injury. He said even small kitchen fires can cause major damage.

“If you live in a multi-residential building, it can contaminate the whole building, which means having to get your carpets cleaned, having to get your drapes dry cleaned or washed,” he said. “It can really become a real nuisance.”

Roder teamed up with the Canadian developers of a new fire safety product called the Fire Ranger, a device designed to shut off the power to a stovetop when it senses smoke. It comes with three components that are connected wirelessly: an adapter, a modified smoke alarm and a punch pad. The stove plugs into the adapter, and the smoke detector and keypad are mounted in the kitchen. If the smoke detector goes off and there’s something burning on the stove, the adapter will automatically shut off electricity to the whole range. Pressing a button on the pin pad will turn the power back on to the range.

“There’s something there now that will work protecting everybody but most importantly our elderly family members and our young children,” said Roder.

The Fire Ranger isn’t meant to go off during normal cooking to ensure it doesn’t become a source of irritation in the home and then get disconnected.

“What we’re looking for is we want this product to be useful, not become a nuisance,” said Roder.

This isn’t the only device being developed to prevent hazardous kitchen fires. A B.C. company has created a safety product called the Toch Smarturns, which comes with a set of replacement knobs for your stove. The knobs link to a motion sensor that indicates if the stove was left on in an empty room. The device then sends a message to your phone to let you know how long the stove has been on or left unattended.

But unlike the Fire Ranger, the Toch Smarturns is still in development and looking for funding on Kickstarter. The Fire Ranger is available online and has CSA approval. It currently only works with electric stovetops but the company is hoping to develop something similar for gas ranges in the future.