Bananas Foster Fire Burns Several Restaurant Patrons


On the same week there was an inappropriate use of 911 for a food emergency (lady gets the wrong Chinese food order and calls the cops), comes news from Palm Harbor, Florida of a horrifyingly real emergency when a bananas foster flambe went horribly awry and burned several people.

Among the injured was 25-year-old elementary school teacher Katie Hudgins, whose clothing was ignited by the fire. She suffered third-degree burns and is currently under sedation while being treated in the Tampa General Hospital burn unit.

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The St. Petersburg Times reports that the fire was caused when a server poured 151-proof rum into an already flaming pan straight from the liquor bottle. Recipes for flambe typically caution that the alcohol should never be poured straight from the bottle, but rather from a cup, ladle or smaller bottle so that the fire can't travel up the stream to ignite the larger supply of fuel.

But according to witnesses, this is exactly what happened. The fire traveled up to the bottle and where upon it created an “explosion of fire”. A statement by Hudgin's fiancee recounts that the “fire shot up and surprised waiter and he pulled [the] bottles back [and] sprayed alcohol on people.”

Read more about the sad and sadly preventable incident HERE.


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