Cleveland
| NORTH YORKSHIRE |  | | | CLEVELAND | | | | COUNTY DURHAM | |
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Donation helps campaign to ban chip pans
PARENTS who lost their son in a chip pan fire are a step closer to stamping out the deadly kitchen equipment.
Lynn and Bryan Ford were at Cleveland Fire Brigade headquarters last Friday to present a cheque for £1,000 to go towards a book of poems Mrs Ford wrote after her son's death.
Andrew Ford died at the age of 22 when he left a chip pan unattended and fell asleep after a night out with friends.
His younger brother, Chris, who was 17 at the time, escaped the blaze just minutes before the house in Surbiton Road, Stockton, exploded.
Mrs Ford, now a volunteer at the brigade, hopes her compilation will be published on June 3, which would have been Andrew's 25th birthday.
She said that, after Andrew died, she would lie in bed unable to sleep, so decided to put her thoughts about him down on paper.
She said: "One is about the night he died, one is called Cheeky Chops, which is about Andrew as a little boy, and another is called Little Chef, as he loved to cook.
"The book is for anyone who has lost somebody. Hopefully, it will bring them comfort and raise awareness of how dangerous chip pans are."
The £1,000 donation was given by Talisman Energy, the company Mr Ford works for as an offshore installation manager.
He said: "They have a fund for worthwhile causes and when I applied they were very supportive."
Proceeds from the book will go towards Cleveland Fire Brigade and Middlesbrough Primary Care Trust's Ban the Pan campaign to eradicate chip pans.
The service is lobbying manufacturers and retailers to stop selling the pans and replace them with safer, temperature-controlled, deep fat fryers.
David Atkinson, the brigade's community education manager, said that 43 per cent of house fires were caused by chip or grill pans.
"We are trying to get the message across that there are alternatives to chip pans. People can use deep fat fryers or buy oven chips, which is a much healthier alternative. If people really want chips, they can get them from the fish and chip shops."
Les Jones, the brigade's head of community safety, praised all Mrs Ford had done for the Ban the Pan campaign.
He said: "After all she has been through, she has been a great ambassador. She is an amazing woman."
5:29pm Monday 12th May 2008
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