I am sure many people put their important documents in their "gun / fire" safe at home or in a safe deposit box at the local bank.

Although the "gun / fire" safe may be fireproof and splashproof to a certain degree. If your house or the local bank branch is under 2m of water. It is very likely that your important documents may be damaged by the flood water.

Please consider putting the important documents in a waterproof bag. Before storing the waterproof bag in the safe.

Cheap alternative to a waterproof bag would be the zip lock bag. Put items into 1st zip lock bag, then place 1st zip lock bag into 2nd zip lock bag.

I would want something more heat tolerant than a ziplock baggie. In a fire, those would melt inside your fireproof safe, destroying your documents with melted plastic rather than heat charring or water damage. "Fireproof" does not mean "nice and cool inside". Typical rating temperatures are 350 degrees inside the safe. Ziplock baggies would be toast at that temperature. Maybe put your documents inside a cardboard sleeve, then put THAT inside the baggies. So in a fire the cardboard would stop the melting plastic from touching your documents.

If theft is a concern, you'd want to choose your safe very carefully. I was considering getting a safe, too, but I was dismayed by how easily someone with a modicum of knowledge and preparation could break into many of the popularly sold safes. Many of them don't even use steel thick enough to withstand the brute force approach. On the other hand, it looks like the really safe safes will cost thousands of dollars. They are big, heavy, hard to move, etc., and generally very inconvenient.

Also, I wonder whether in a burglary, by putting your documents in a safe you are more likely to lose them. Reasoning that a safe typically has more valuable stuff, the burglar might concentrate his effort there.

DB

A purpose built fireproof safe is supposed to 'fail' closed. Those Sentry or whomever you buy in the store. They are a plastic on the outside that is designed to melt therefore sealing the gap where the lid opens to prevent water intrusion.
My gun safe has special rubber seals around the door that are supposed to melt sealing the door from water/smoke intrusion as well.

The thing to be careful of if you put your documents in a baggie is the safe is only heat resistant, it won't prevent it from getting hot inside, what its designed to do is keep the inside temperatures from reaching the flashpoint of paper. The melting point of most plastics is below the flashpoint of paper so plastic in your fire safe can melt even though the paper is safe. Thats why they make media safe's that cost more but keep a lower internal temperature below where your plastic cd's and such will melt.

I found that by the time you pay $200 or more for a media fire safe I paid $500 for a gun safe which had an even better fire rating than the media safe and the cost per square inch was much lower. Gave us an excuse to drive to Cabelas too as they had them in stock so no $hipping charges.

my document storage box is a 50cal ammo can (water tight lid)inside my gun safe (not fire rated)....along with an AR carbine and bandoleer of ammo on stripper clips that is part of my hurricane evacuation check list... documents are copied on a couple of thumb drives....one at a relative's that is the executor of my will, and the other in a sealed pill bottle in my car...

I put important documents in a safe, so that it is beyond the reach of my small kids. So that they cannot doodle/cut/tear/wet my important papers. If they accidentally start a fire in my house, at least the safe would offer a certain degree of protection for the papers.

During the last 2 years, many countries experienced flooding. I noticed people standing on their rooftop waiting to be rescue. That means if they had a safe at home, that safe is under water.

There were reports of local bank being submerged and content of safe deposit boxes ruined by water.

Hence, I thought of putting the safe content into a waterproof bag or double zip lock.

Theft & burglary is not a concern. If you allow another person to approach your safe with hand or power tools. I doubt if any safe sold in Walmart would be able to resist the attack.

Yes, I did not expect room temperature inside and not aware it is so hot.

Thanks for the tip.


Thanks for the info, that is assuming there is fire to melt the rubber seal. What if the water came first ?

Noted.

I had scanned copies on multiple thumb drives too.

Sometimes copies just won't do, especially if the paper has sentimental value such as the only photo of you and your late father fishing by a river.

Pictures are esaily duplicated, either copied or scanned, and should be as older pictures will deteriorate with age so unless you do make a backup you will loose it with time.

Scan to PDF.

That works for most, not all, documents. Sometimes the originals can be really important for certain legal procedures. Replacing them may not be impossible, but it will probably be a lot tougher than protecting them in a good safe.

DB

I scan to tif instead of pdf. the pdf format changes a little between versions and I sometimes have older pdf's throw errors with newer readers. Its also easier to make images into pdf's than it is to convert a pdf into something else.

When it comes to scanned documents I find that showing due diligence tends to go a long way. If you produce one single scan of something important that tends to look like it was produced for the situation. But if you show a nicely organized set of everything scanned then it becomes more believable that it is legit.

Certain exceptions will apply of course.

Scans also help to make it easier to replace originals. If you call up for a replacement someone will need to know how to find the original in their database. If you can call up and say I need document number 123435 dated 2009-11-17 that is 20 pages in length they can find and replace it quicker.