We have tight security in our condo building, so theft is not much of a worry. Fire would be more of a concern for us.
The only time I was ever burgled was in an apartment I had in Hawaii. And it happened while I was in the shower! I heard him leaving as I got out of the shower; he must have left because he heard the water shut off. He had taken off the window screen and removed one of the glass louvers, then reached in and unlocked the front door. All he took was my wallet, which was in my pants in my bedroom. I know it was a he because a downstairs neighbor saw him as he ran past. The police never caught him.
The one thing I was most worried about was something like the water freezing in the pipes in winter, causing damage to a neighbor’s apartment and nobody being there to handle it.
I got a housesitter - he’s happy because he’s got a very nice, large and well-furnished apartment for almost nothing (he pays “expenses” but no rent); I’m happy because he’s there and I know he’ll take good care of things; the neighbors are happy because the house doesn’t have an evidently-empty apartment and because my sitter switches the heater on (it’s the kind of location that can get 10C in August nights, which for Spanish standards is colder’n a witch’s tits).
For the place where I’m actually sleeping (sorry, I refuse to claim that I “live” there), well, if there’s a burglar, the one thing that’ll hurt is the computer. It’s about the only thing worth taking. If they took both the computer and the backup CDs I’d be mighty pissed but there’s copies of most of it either back home or at Mom’s.
I don’t worry about either, really. However, back when I lived in Brooklyn there was one summer that was painfully and really disgustingly hot. I bought a used and fairly old and inefficient window unit air conditioner to keep myself from completely melting. I wasn’t home most of the day so one day I came home and turned it on, then had to go out for a couple hours. I wanted it to be comfortable when I got back so I left it on. I was only about a 20 minute walk away for about 3 hours but the entire time I kept worrying that the old unit was going to cause a short or something and cause a fire. By the end of my meeting I was convinced I was going to retun to an apartment ablaze. I left my meeting and ran home in about 98 degree humidity, turned the corner to my block and expected to see the intersection filled with fire engines and emergency vehicles and black smoke and flames billowing from my top floor apartment. Fortunately, I was wrong.
Everything was fine. However, that night I got up from the couch and turned out the lights to go to bed, and saw red flashing lights reflected on my walls. I looked out the window to the intersection below and nearly had a heart attack- there were two fire engines at the base of my building. I don’t know why they were there, but they never announced themselves with a siren. It was kind of freaky after the panic I was expecting earlier that evening.
I also worry mostly about my dogs. Last summer, we were plagued by an insane intruder who repeatedly tresspassed on ours and our neighbor’s properties. One night, and we have this on video from our surveillance cameras (yes, it got that bad and the neighbor’s roommate later shot at the guy and ended up getting sued), he shorted our electric fence and wacked our elderly Chow Chow upside the head three times with the hunk of wood he used to short the circuit. It broke off his one of his front canines, but he chased the guy back over the fence and suffers no pain from the broken tooth.
I should have worried about that before the landlord replaced the furnace. I came home at 2 AM from an all-day Christmas plane trip and slipped and fell on a patch of ice in the kitchen. THAT’s something you don’t really expect.