If your home was on fire, how long would it take for the fire department to arrive and put it out?

Ok now the Math:

Time it takes for fire department to gather together and leave the station + Travel time from fire department to your home + 5 minutes to unload and hook up water.

Add those together to give you the time spent before the fire department can begin to put out the fire.

The amount of time it takes to put out a fire has a lot of variables. After fifteen minutes the fire will probably be raging in one part of the house. After a half hour, the house will be engulfed in flames, and after an hour it will be burning embers. A lot depends on the construction, as firewalls can stop or seriously impede the spread of the fire. Also, a brick or concrete house won't burn as well as wooden house.

If the fire department arrives within 15 minutes they have a good chance of putting the fire out in a shorter period of time. A good estimate is around 15-30 minutes to put the fire out.

If the fire department arrives within 30 minutes it will take a much longer time to put the fire out. A good estimate is between 30 minutes and an hour plus.

If the fire department gets there later than 45 minutes they most likely will just try to contain the fire and wait for it to burn out. This could be an hour plus.

Add the time spent to get to your home and the approximate time to put the fire out to determine your answer.

Understanding Safe Fire Ratings can be confusing.

Having you figure out how long it will take the fire department to get to your home and then put out the fire helps us to determine how long the valuables in your safe will be exposed to high temperatures.

The number value on Liberty fire ratings is the approximate time it takes the inside of the safe to reach a temperature of 350 degrees. 350 degrees is when paper chars. This is the standard most safe companies use to determine when the safe fails.

Liberty's goal is to keep the contents of the safe exposed to the lowest temperature possible for as long as possible.

The layers of fireboard, thickness of steel, and the door seal all play a critical role in determining the fire rating.

After the safe reaches 210 degrees and the door seal is activated the temperature will continue to rise at a rate determined by the layers of fireboard, and the thickness of steel.

The contents of a 30 minute rated safe will be exposed to 210 degrees within 10 to 15 minutes. Then the door seal will go off and the temperature will climb at a slower rate. In 30 minutes the temperature will reach 350 degrees.

A 60 minute fire rated safe has more layers of fireboard and thicker steel so after 10 to 15 minutes the safe will reach 210 degrees, the fire seal goes off and then the temperature starts to increase at a slower rate and will last for 60 minutes until it reaches 350 degrees.

So in a nutshell the higher the fire rating means the contents of the safe will be exposed to lower temperatures for a longer period of time.