How you can get the oxygen away from the fire?

It is sometimes possible to tightly close off the fire. For example, if the material in a pan on a stove ignites, the very best response is to slip the lid onto the pan, quickly starving the fire of oxygen. It would not be a good idea to throw anything like liquid into the pan.

You can also remove oxygen from a fire by putting something on the fuel that keeps oxygen away. This is what happens when you use a Halon gas fire extinguishing system. When you put water on a fire, one of the two things water does is to prevent oxygen from getting to the fuel.