In 2008 the Granite Station Feed store caught fire and burned down. The fire burned at approximately 1600°F for over an hour. As you can see inside, the cash register tray didn't do well, but there was enough protection that aside from $40, the rest of the money survived. Plus, the rest of the papers survived. It's great to see the safe exceeded expectations.

A 2008 Franklin 17 safe is fire rated for 60 minutes at 1200°F. However, this fire rating is the minimum they guarantee a safe for. The fire this safe went through burned a lot hotter. Liberty safes often exceed what they are rated for.

Almost all safes evolve for the better over time. Today, a Franklin model has an even better fire rating, 1200°F at 75 minutes, plus a lot of other great features that it didn't have back then. It did great then, and it'll do even better now.

This is our "$100K safe". Some may remember the Erskine fire that raged early summer of 2016 around the Lake Isabella area. This safe is a Costco safe with a 30 minute fire rating. Aside from the firearms, the owner also stored $100K in cash in here as well. The wildfire burned down everything in its path, and unfortunately there was nothing left in this safe except steel barrels, warped stocks and ash.

To be fair, the wildfire raged at about 2200°F and most gun safes wouldn't hold up against that kind of heat (a 2.5 hr safe might have). The real lesson here is the more valuables you store in your safe, the more important it is to have a safe that can protect them accordingly. If you have $100K, you need more than a $500 safe.

When we hear someone say they're storing a lot of value in their safe, we try to help them buy the right level safe for the job. We're really not trying to upsell you, we just really hate to hear stories like this one.