Spare Time and a Welder

Ryan Royal from Colorado Springs Truck 8 sent in this interesting door from their first due. He wanted to make sure that the crew from Truck 8 and Engine 8 got credit for the find. The door is in a 160' by 30' commercial building that sits among many highly secured buildings in a high crime rate area. Apparently, as a result of multiple break-ins at this building, the owner got pretty creative. The photo below is the back door of this building. Remember, the building is 160x30 so the building only has two doors, Side A, and Side C. All the windows in this building had been bricked over, so it is fairly reasonable to say that this door may have to be opened.

The first photo shows the outside of this door. Besides the custom made sign at the top, it has no obvious bolt patterns or signs of locks. It does however appear that there is some type of modification or reinforcing all the way around the outside of the door. The door is approx 3 inches thick.

The photo above shows the modifications that have been done on the inside. The door has been hardened with 1/4 inch thick steel welded all the way around the perimeter of the door. In addition to the steel, the owner welded drop bar mounts both high and low on the door. The drop bars are 1x3 pieces of tubular square steel. Although it may look totally out of place, the panic hardware is also mounted to this reinforced frame.

The photo above is when it is all buttoned up. A homemade gate (angle iron and rebar) is put in place as an additional means of protection. The gate is secured by two padlocks in the middle. If you look at the drop bars, you can see that they too get padlocked in place, preventing them from being defeated but cutting, or knocking them out of place. The trash can is more than likely put in place just to piss you off one last time after getting through all of the locks.