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Sales are up for in-home personal safes. But, will the ones marketed for fire & water protection hold up in an actual fire?
ABC15 randomly chose two locking safes. One is manufactured by SentrySafe and sold as a security safe that is water and fireproof.
The other, manufactured by Honeywell is a basic security lock box with fire retardant according to the owner's manual.
For safety reasons, the Phoenix Fire Department helped set the two boxes on fire.
It's estimated it takes fire crews an average of 10 minutes to respond and extinguish a typical house fire.
In the SentrySafe safe, model HD-4100, file folders, a computer thumb-drive and DVDs were placed in the box and locked. The same items, except for file folders were placed inside the small Honeywell box and locked.
Each box was placed on a separate wooden pallet, surrounded by other pallets and set on fire by a Phoenix firefighter.
The boxes burned for 10 minutes at temperatures around 1,000 to 1,500 degrees according to firefighters.
Minutes into the process, the SentrySafe safe appeared to glow and eventually turn from a dark charcoal color to white.
"Wow, it looks like a concrete box," said Phoenix Fire Captain Mark Faulkner.
At the same time, the Honeywell security box appeared to allow flames pierce through the area where the locking plastic locking mechanism is placed.
Crews doused the boxes with water and pulled them out of the smoldering ashes.
First was the safe from SentrySafe. A thick layer of material around the box broke into pieces leaving only a plastic shell.
Using a crowbar, the SentrySafe brand was opened and nothing inside was damaged. The contents were not hot or wet from the water used to put out the flames.
Next, the smaller Honeywell security box was pulled out. Immediately several small holes were visible on top of the box where the lock used to be. The lid was opened and everything inside had turned to ash.
"This particular product is a basic security box and not sold as a fire safe or fire chest," said a Honeywell spokesperson. "The fire retardant is to only slow things down a bit, we have other products that are marketed as fire products."
A spokesperson from SentrySafe expressed their confidence in the product saying the outcome wasn't surprising.
"We use extremely rigorous third party testing standards to ensure that irreplaceable items are protected from fire, water and theft," said Sondra McFarlane, SentrySafe director of marketing in a statement.
The Phoenix Fire Department did not have an opinion of the safes and was only used to conduct the process in a safe manner.
