PREPARING YOUR HOME
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ladders available for all locations higher than the ground floor. Emergency escape masks and Water Jel Fire Blankets are other precautions. The blanket protects much longer than a regular one soaked with water and is available from Alliance Medical, 8624 Rt. C, PO Box 147, Russelville, MO 65074, 888-633-6908, www.allmed.net. Without ready access to the services of a functioning fire department, you would need more extensive firefighting capabilities to handle larger fires, accidental and set. In rural areas or even on large suburban lots there is also the danger of forest and grass fires. Hardening Your Home Sadly, through necessity our homes are becoming more like fortresses. Although it's impossible to make your home totally impregnable, you can make it a lot harder to get into. All exterior doors should be of heavy-gauge steel with no glass, mounted tightly in a steel frame with inside or pinned hinges. Install wide-angle door viewers and forged, hardened steel pin, tumbler deadbolt locks with pick-resistant cylinders and at least a one-inch throw on all exterior doors. Mortise and vertical deadbolts are preferred, and Schlage Primus, Medeco and Kaba locks are among the best. Pay particular attention to securing sliding glass doors, outside basement doors and weak garage doors. All windows should have quarter-inch, case-hardened pins or five-sixteenths-inch eye bolts through both frames. You may want to protect them further with decorative wrought iron, iron rods, or heavy-gauge sliding steel shutters. Regular glass can be replaced with shatterproof glass or unbreakable Lexan. Put heavy wire screen over garage windows and skylights. Install burglar alarms and other intruder detection devices. Discourage intruders by properly locating and trimming trees and shrubs, using blinds on windows and providing nighttime illumination of your entrances and yard. Engrave or otherwise mark all valuables for identification. Guard Dogs A good guard dog provides a substantial deterrent against intruders. Larger dogs are usually more intimidating with German Shepherds, Dobermans, Rottweilers, Airedales, Bullmastiffs, Boxers, Rhodesian Ridgebacks and Bouvier des Flandres among the better breeds. If you spend the money to get one, make sure it is adequately trained and