Ad hoc cabinet fire protection

[Rich Jordan]

An acquaintence just sent me a picture of his powder/primer storage. He has a heavy wood cabinet about 4 feet tall with heavy wood divider inside (strong load bearing, and it separates powder from primers with 2" of wood), and screwed&glued 5/8" drywall around all sides, top, bottom, and doors (with nice edge and corner modlings, painted, but with a flat non-water resistant paint). The doors overlap the frame; its not a tight seal but there's no direct path in/out of the cabinet when its closed. Then he stores his rotating water cache on top of it; that's 5-gallon plastic 'Nato style' cans, 40 gallons total.

His thought was that in a fire the drywall should help protect the cabinet contents long enough for the plastic cans to split/leak and douse the outside of the cabinet, helping to prolong the safety (and possibly usability) of the components inside. The drywall might even absorb some of the water as it flowed down helping even more (not sure on that with the paint...).

Is this actually a reasonable idea (the waer, not the drywall)? I'm not sure even plastic cans will reliably release water in a fire unless they are directly in the flame; wouldn't the enclosed H2O keep them below melting below the waterline, and a pressure-related release would more likely blow the cap off and vent steam than flow water out and down.

Just curious. I can put a plastic tub with water, or some water jugs on top of my cabinet too if it would be potentially beneficial (and the risks of an accidental soaking not too high).

[Weetabix]

I'd been thinking about storing ammo in ammo cans in a chest freezer with no top lid. Loop some plastic water supply line over the top. Fire melts the water supply line and fills the freezer. Ammo cans keep the contents dry. You'd need some way to make sure the water went into the freezer.

I know that a fire will melt plastic water supply line (like the kind under a sink) because a renter burned a house and a couple days later, the basement was a swimming pool. It came from the supply line under the sink.

I don't know why yours wouldn't work. Especially if the water were in milk jugs. I'd think those couldn't outlast much of a fire, and they probably couldn't build up enough pressure to go anywhere but down.

[Frankingun]

Would too much water break apart the drywal?