Without enough protection and safety measures, a fire in your home (or business) could be the most devastating tragedy you will ever experience. Nowadays, people have come to realize that it is best to equip their homes and offices with fire protective gadgets and devices such as fire exits and fire alarms. Unfortunately, these safety measures can not protect your valuable possessions, as they would be set ablaze in such an event. Fireproof safes are exclusively designed to shield your most valuable possessions, documents, and properties from fire.

Generally, most safes are built with fire-resistant features. But it doesn't necessarily mean that they are fireproof. The two words are totally different. Fire-resistant safes refer to the ability of the safes to withstand the blazing heat of the fire to certain given point. These are rated by the Underwriters Laboratories. Fireproof safes, however, provide more protection than what fire-resistant safes can do. What's more, they can protect even the most delicate data in stored in your floppy diskette or CDs. Fireproof safes are more reliable when it comes to media files.

Like fire-resistant safes, fireproof safes are impact tested so as to ensure the safes' capability to endure the fire. Usually, fully loaded fireproof safes are heated to a maximum of 1550 degrees Fahrenheit for about an hour and a half. After which, it is dropped 30 feet unto a layer of rubble and then heated all over again for another 30 minutes at 1550 degrees Fahrenheit. Small, extremely flammable objects like paper are contained within during the tests to ensure their effectiveness.

Contrary to some beliefs, documents and other valuable materials cannot be equally protected by fireproof safes and the typical metal filing cabinet. Because of the nature of paper to be destroyed at 400 degrees even inside the vault, the use of metal vaults or filing cabinets have proven to be inefficient in situations like these.

On the other hand, because of the escalating prices of commodities these days, more and more people tend to think that obtaining these fireproof safes are actually a waste of money. They contend that the prices of fireproof safes are too much considering the fact that it looks just like the same as that of a typical metal vault or filing cabinet.