Fire safes??

brnsvllyjohn

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Oct 7, 2017
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327
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California (for now)
Our area in California was evacuated on Sunday night because of the wildfires. We got back home on Thursday. We were out of town so we never had a chance to grab any valuables and all we had was my wife's car and a change of clothes. We had always had a plan on what to grab if we were ever evacuated but when you are not home you don't get that chance. Now that we are back home we were very lucky and had no damage. I have spoken to people in the area who had "fire proof" gun safes that had nothing but rusty barrels left and a little charcoal. Anyone have experience with fire safes that actually worked? I know they have ratings but what does it really take if your house burns to the ground?
You can imagine the things we were thinking about as we waited to return home. The only thing we lost was some food items and I had to run generators for over a day to get things back in order and have water. We now have phones and power so we area almost back to normal.

Not going to talk about what I currently have but it isn't cheap and it has a good fire rating I just don't know if it would have survived.
 
Glad to here that your home was spared, but sorry for what your community has had to go through. This thread should be an interesting one. I don't know if any safe is able to withstand the inferno that came from the type of fire your community has experienced. Usually a single dwelling fire has fire fighters on it in minutes and the fire is suppressed in short order. With whole neighbourhoods up in flames most homes burned until there was nothing left. I am sure there are a few firefighters on here that can share there knowledge on the subject.
 
A good friend of mine who is a Chief for a local fire dept talked out of buying one yrs ago. He shared enough stories like what you described. For thieves. That can be another story.
 
Safes with let's say a 30, 60 minute fire windows usually mean more Sheetrock is in them. I've spoken to fire chief friend and his response, was that in a city normal response time is anywhere 3-7 minutes for the fire dept. safe are not designed to withstand the firestorm Santa Rosa got. My son lives in the area but was spared, the god!
 
Years ago my uncle had his house burn to the ground when they where on vacation and they lost everything except what they had with them. This wasn't just a regular house but a log home that was was two stories tall with a basement, a very large home. I went there to help cleanup and was there when the fire investigators where going through the rubble. Everything was gone and the basement was full of a pile of ashes. They found his fire safe and pulled it out of the ashes and got it opened up. All the paperwork inside the safe was in there and readable. The edges where a bit brittle as the safe melted together around the opening during the fire. This sold me on these immediately and I have all my important papers inside one in my home ( it is a Sentry). I'm not sure exactly where it was located in the home, or if something helped it during the fire but It was very impressive seeing what it went through. I hope I never have to go through what he did.
 
My experience and opinion in terms of guns is that it is better to be properly insured than to mess around with spending a ton of money on safes. As others have said, there is so many variables involved in a fire(temp/duration/home construction/safe placement). Unless it's something that's really irreplaceable I would rather be properly insured. Many home owners policies only include a small amount of coverage for firearms. A safe isn't going to do much in a flood, or if your safe is on an upper floor and collapses into the basement during a fire.

I also knew a guy who had a big gun safe, thieves broke into his home, they couldn't get into the safe so instead them tipped it over for spite. Two of his rifles had broken stocks, 1 had dented scope, and virtually all of the rest of the guns had scratches and knicks of some kind. Moral of the story, bolt your safe to the wall or ground.

I did my research a year or two ago as my gun "collection" has grown. Forgive me if this is inappropriate, and I'm not trying to advertise for them, but I got a policy with collectibles insurance co. It covers scopes and ammo too(many homeowners do not). NRA has a similar insurance program but I heard A LOT of negatives about it.
 
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Its my understanding that the most important part is the expandable seal. If it works properly the safe should protect the contents the full fire rating but any flaw in the seal material or where it expands pretty much means the end of anything inside.
 
Depends on the safe, the fire and sometimes the contents. The local gun store burned down over a decade ago. He had his guns in a real safe. The kind that is made with plate steel doors that are a few inches thick (it was an old safe so it was probably full of asbestos as well). The guns survived but were damaged and needed stock and finish work, not to mention what heat does to metal hardness and strength. If you buy one of the RSC's on the market today with a fire rating, make sure it is a UL rating.

If you want to be sure your guns are going to survive build a concrete room around the safe and keep your fingers crossed.
 
All of my research over the years has pointed to the notion that "fire" safes only repel fire damage for a certain number of minutes in hopes that the fire department gets there before the time is up to put out the fire. The higher the rating, the longer you have until the fire department needs to get there. Good advice above to make sure you have good insurance as well as a good safe.
 
It sounds like a person would be better off building their own. Maybe a couple of layers of 1" Type X gypsum, I know 2" of it will get you a 2 hour rated wall.
 
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