When a crisis strikes your home, valuables and lives are threatened and lost. Since floods, fires, earthquakes, and viscous storms are a real threat for ever homeowner it's important to establish how you're going to protect the things and people you love before a crisis is in full effect.
If you do not think a house fire can happen to you, check out these residential fire facts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
Residential Fire Facts
- Deaths from fires and burns are the third leading cause of fatal home injury.
- The United State's rate rate from fires ranks eighth among the 25 developed countries for which statistics are available.
- In 2009, nearly 85% of all US fire deaths occurred in homes.
- In 2009, fire departments responded to 377,000 home fires in the United States, which claimed the lives of 2,565 people and injured another 13,050. These statistics do not include firefighters injured or killed.
- Smoking is the leading cause of fire-related deaths and cooking is the primary cause of residential fires.
Most residential fire-related deaths are preventable but continue to pose significant public health problems. What can you do to protect your loved ones? Install a reputable fire alarm system and eliminate smoking and lighting candles within the home. Take extra care when cooking to ensure gas appliances are working properly.
How can you protect your valuables in a fire?
The best way to protect your valuables in a fire is to invest in a fire proof safe. There are two types of fireproof safes on the market: those for paper storage and those for data storage. Data fire safes carry a UL 125 or UL 72 rating and document storage fire safes carry a UL 350 fire rating.
An UL (Underwriter's Laboratories) rating of 125 means that the inside of the safe will not go above 125 degrees Fahrenheit. This is close to the temperature at which computer media, which includes CD's, DVD's, film negatives, etc., will melt. The UL 350 test is rated for the storage of paper documents which begin to burn at 400 ° F.
How many hours of fire protection do you need? Typically, the average fire burns at around 800 ° F for about 20 minutes. The UL test for both UL 125 ° F and UL 350 ° F ratings is performed for 1 hour at 1700 ° F. Very rarely will a house fire burn for more than an hour in one area. So, not only is a 1 hour fireproof safe effective, it's also less costly.
Buyers Beware When shopping around for a fire resistant safe you may notice two different labels: 'UL listed' and UL Rated and Tested. ' A label that reads, 'tested to UL standards' means that the product was submitted to UL for testing but that the product did not pass or has not yet passed testing protocol. A product that reads 'UL Listed' has passed the appropriate testing and is a reliable product. For more information on fire safes contact a reputable home safes company.