If Your House Is On Fire Do You Have A Plan?

[Merwanseth]

You are at or near your home and you realize that it's burning beyond being able to put it out. If you have at least a few minutes, what would you quickly try to save before you run out the door? We've had threads about "bug out" bags. That's a given. But if you have a coin collection, boxes or bags of copper or pm's, paper money beyond what's in your "bug out" bag, original art work and/or other valuables, do you have a plan? Do you have pictures of these valuables? Are they insured? Did you get an appraisal from a professional that you can show your insurance company? If you have the time, is it a good idea to break some windows and try to throw some stuff outside? ... I'm not the expert here. I'd appreciate feedback from anyone who has information or perspective to share. Thank you.

[Thogey]

I plan evacuating, waiting a half hour, then calling the fire department, then my insurance company.

My important document"s Birth certificates insurance papers marrige license DD214 titles and deeds etc, are all off site now.

My PM's are safe from fire. I'll loose the guns, ammo, pictures, copper cents, nickels, antiques etc. I won't blubber and cry if everyone gets out safe. It's just stuff and I plan on losing it all some day anyway.

[Nickelless]

Thogey, why would your base metals be at risk in case of fire? And why would you wait half an hour to call the fire department? If you're doing that to get a complete replacement of items lost in the fire, what if there's a major disaster first that wipes out insurance companies' funds from which they would otherwise pay out settlements?

I think it would be very wise for everyone to have not just an evacuation plan but a fire mitigation plan as well. I'm not necessarily worried about fire damage to my guns, for the same reason I wouldn't worry about fire damage to base metals or PMs--it takes major heat to warp metals. I'd consult a gunsmith as soon as possible after the fact IF my guns were damaged by fire. But it'd make a lot more sense to establish a fireproof/fire-resistant storage area now to protect preps, guns and other important items through a fire rather than just resign ourselves to salvaging whatever we can after the fact.

I'm storing FRNs in a fire-resistant storage case that's rated for 30 minutes in an 1100-degree fire, although coins wouldn't have as much of a problem in the event of a fire--bank boxes of coins should do well even in a fire. Ideally, I'd like to get a fireproof filing cabinet such as this for important documents, firearms and other items:

http://www.nationwidesafes.com/fire-pro ... 10120.html

I've yet to establish a fire-resistant storage area for my food preps, but canned goods would be the least-affected items. I've been pondering how to protect my dozens of 5-gallon plastic buckets and have been wondering if building some sort of concrete-encased storage area would provide protection from the extreme temperatures of a fire such that the buckets wouldn't melt. If the fire was hot enough to melt concrete, then I've got much bigger problems than just melted buckets. I just bought several of these steel shelving units and I'm wondering if it's possible to create some kind of heat-dissipating structure around the shelves, possibly made out of copper (sort of like a Faraday cage for heat rather than radiation), to protect what's on the shelves. I'm working on establishing a second cache site for some of my food preps so that I'm not putting all my powdered eggs in one basket, but in the meantime I like the challenge of figuring out how to protect stuff from being lost if a fire should occur.

But for even more basic fire prevention, I have two fire extinguishers centrally located on both ends of the main floor of my homestead and one fire extinguisher centrally located in the lower level.