The order to keep to before any repair
Touch nothing before the police have been. Splinters on the frame, tool marks on the faceplate and the position of the bolts are all part of what gets recorded on the report. Photograph from several angles: the door seen from the landing or the street, the area around the lock, the damaged jamb, then the inside of the home.
Report the burglary, then notify your insurer within the time your policy allows. Keep every part that comes off: the drilled cylinder, the torn-out lock, the pieces of frame timber. In Golfe-Juan, if the flat is let or run by an agency, tell the owner the same day, before any permanent work, and keep a copy of what you send.
In the meantime a temporary fix closes the home without erasing anything. A stand-in lock, a keep put back, boarding over a broken glazed panel: it holds while the claim moves forward. That matters all the more when the place stands empty part of the year and nobody can stay and watch over it.
Secondary ways in, the weak point of the local building stock
In the old town the front door is not always the weak link. Former workshops have kept their back doors, cellar vents and basement entrances, most of them opening onto a lane where nobody walks after dark. A shop's metal shutter poorly anchored at floor level lifts without much noise, well away from avenue Georges Clemenceau.
On the seafront it is the underground garages, the cellars and the service doors of small condominiums that serve as the way in. A solid flat door above a wide-open basement protects very little, and the garage ramp is crossed behind a car that is driving in. The question after a break-in is a simple one: where did they actually get in?
Up at Les Encourdoules and along the Super-Cannes slope the properties are enclosed but isolated, and noise gets lost on the slope. There we look at the pedestrian gate, the garage door, the garden sliding doors and the pool plant room as closely as at the entrance. Fixing the point that gave way comes before any general strengthening.
How does this service work?
Techniques, typical situations, standards and things to watch out for: it is all on our securing your home after a break-in page. This page focuses on what the service involves in Vallauris.