Fire fry pan

Last night whilst preparing for cooking tea our fry pan caught alight with massive amounts of flame. I had the fry pan on fairly hot as I wanted to cook it hot like the Asian style cooking - hot and fast (so wrong sounding!). Anyway I had the heat on high and put a bit of oil into the fry pan and was just about to put the onions in to fry when it suddenly caught alight. Arrrghhh! I was holding the fry pan at this stage and you can imagine my response - a big scream and then I threw it on the floor. Thankfully the fry pan landed face down and the flames were smothered out. My husband stood on the fry pan to make sure it was out. We both got quite a fright and were shaken. We were both so grateful that it didn't turn into a fire or anything frightful like that - particularly after what has recently happened with Black Saturday and all. I found it a bit amusing afterwards though, just the craziness of it all. I have never had that happen to me before and now that it has happened I can understand how easy it is to start a fire in a house. Beware fires are everywhere - just waiting to happen.