Self Storage: risk of fire!

A fire during the night 6 November 2010 at Abacus Self Store, Burscough, West Lancashire, resulted in the loss of a large number of units, and numerous clients’ possessions. It was a timely reminder that such things can and do happen: all users of self storage should be fully aware of the risks.

Abacus Self Store: disaster

The Abacus Self Store fire was dramatic ‒ ferocious enough to call for the evacuation of twelve houses and a pub close to its location in the Waterside Business Park. Eighty firefighters and fifteen fire appliances attended the blaze, and needed to pump water from the nearby Leeds‒Liverpool canal to tackle it; even then it took three days to extinguish the fire completely.

Some 90 Abacus customers were affected, and many of them lost everything they had placed in storage ‒ which in some cases was just about everything they possessed: one had stored the contents of his home there, while between moves.

Big Yellow: close-run thing

A fire at a self storage facility: surely a rare occurrence? Not really. Just four months previously, disaster was narrowly averted at a Big Yellow Self Storage facility at New Malden, southwest London. On 26 July, the fire service was called at 7:30pm (about the same time as the Abacus fire began, as it happens): their quick response saved the day. The fire, which had broken out in the office area of the facility, was rapidly contained, before it spread to the tenants’ units.

In the USA, where the self storage industry is far bigger than in the UK, major fires in self storage facilities are reported fairly frequently ‒ perhaps as often as one a month. The US website Inside Self Storage tracks such news events: “Fire Crews Battle Three-Alarm Fire at Baltimore Self-Storage Facility”, it announced recently, referring to a fire on 11 December that destroyed several units.

Caveat emptor

One news report about the Abacus fire suggested that a removal company had placed four containers on the site, filled with their clients’ possessions. These, it speculated, were probably not covered by insurance, unless the clients had taken out insurance themselves.

Caveat emptor! (Buyer beware!) Generally, household insurance does not cover possessions outside the home ‒ and that includes possessions held in self storage. This is why many self storage companies offer insurance, or insist that their clients take out insurance of their own to cover their possessions while held in storage.

Insurance need not be expensive. One of the best deals, offered by the specialist self storage insurers Insurastore.com, quotes 55p per £1000 of cover, per week ‒ that’s less than £20 per week to cover £30,000 worth of possessions. (For more about self storage and insurance, see our earlier blog entitled “How does insurance for self storage really work?”)

Let the lessons of recent fires be learnt: self storage facilities are not immune to disaster. You could sum up the best advice in this motto:

“If your possessions are precious enough to be stored ‒ they are precious enough to be insured!”

One Response to “Self Storage: risk of fire!”

1. glenn murray says:

   December 17, 2010 at 2:11 am

   Shipping container self storage is far less risky. They were designed for storage and shipping. Now they are popular for static hiring and cost far less to rent. They are much more user friendly, no time consuming corridors, stairs, lifts, trolleys or signing in, THE CLIENT HOLDS THE KEY and has 24 hour access at our facility and many others around the country. People occasionally worry about condensation but its as likely as a fire in traditional self storage …which would the client prefer? For peace of mind you can purchase absorba-poles, but we find no one bothers and we’ve had client belongings in for 10 years and it’s still fine.