Joyce Pierce April 23rd, 2009
Have you ever had to leave your home in a hurry because of a natural disaster? You may think it will never happen to you, but that’s what I thought, too, until it came just a little too close to home.
I live in Houston, Texas, and like many of you, in August 2005 we stayed glued to the television for days watching the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina along the gulf coast. Little did we know that we would soon be facing our own problems with Hurricane Rita. My business with Emerson Publications has always been to help people record personal and financial information so that family members would know what to do in their absence. Watching people wading through contaminated water with little or nothing on their backs made me realize how important it is to have a record of important documents for yourself and not just for loved ones in the event of your death. One thing you never know is when you may have an emergency that requires you to leave your home because of hurricane, tornado, flood, or fire.
It’s important for every family to have an evacuation plan, and also to have the supplies necessary to sustain and protect you if you’re forced to leave your home. FEMA has an excellent website at www.ready.gov to help you know what you should have to prepare for emergencies and also what you’ll need to claim your losses.
In our home, I have a backpack that I use for a 72 hour kit, and it was never quite as important to me as in the days prior to Hurricane Rita. In it, I have enough food to sustain life for three days. I have a change of clothes and a survival book. I have bottled water, vitamins, and medications. I have enough cash to get by if the whole town loses electricity and ATMs don’t work. Another valuable lesson from living through this crisis is that I don’t let the gas tank on my car go past the half full mark in case I do have to leave the city.
These are the things I would need to keep me alive, or at least make the evacuation less uncomfortable, but what I want to talk about today is how to preserve your valuable paperwork without having to drag, haul, or carry them. You want to make sure you have everything you need to simplify filing insurance claims and getting the help you need. You also want to preserve those things that are precious to you. Once you’ve listened to this call, you’ll see that these things I’m going to mention are things that you need to start working on now, so that they are ready at a moment’s notice. I will show you how your digital camera, your scanner, and a memory stick can become invaluable in preserving your paperwork.
Photographs – If you talk to anyone who has suffered the effects of a fire, they will tell you that the one thing they wish they could have saved is their pictures. Photographs are a way of preserving memories and allowing us to go back in time. Once they’re lost, there’s never really a way to go back and capture them in your mind. A few years ago I took all of my photo albums, tore them apart, and made an album for each of my three children. Before I turned the albums over to them, I scanned the photos that meant the most to me, and saved them on my computer. I’ve saved some of them on CD, but in preparation for Hurricane Rita, I uploaded every one of those photos, in addition to digital photos stored on my computer, to www.kodakgallery.com There are other places online to store photos, such as www.snapfish.com . If you have a digital camera, your software probably includes a site for storing your pictures.
Insurance — In order to file a claim for property that was lost, you have to prove that you owned it. My insurance man suggested taking photos of everything and giving them to him to preserve in a file, but what if HIS office were destroyed? I went through our home, opened every drawer and cabinet, and took photos, and then uploaded them to the same website with kodakgallery. I emailed the link for the album to each of my three children — two of whom live in other states — and told them where they could find all this information if we were hurt, missing, or dead. If you were to lose everything, you could probably remember the big pieces of furniture, but it could take years before you’d remember your grandmother’s watch that was left lying in a dresser drawer, or the books and CDs that are on your bookcase. Taking pictures provides proof that they were in your home. Digital cameras are a wonderful resource. If you don’t have one, at least borrow one and store the information on your own memory card.
Important Papers — If you have receipts for items you’ve purchased, or even a journal where you record purchases, consider scanning them. This is extra documentation to prove ownership AND will provide the original cost. Check with your insurance man and make sure you have replaceable cost insurance so that when you go to replace that kitchen table that you bought in 1960 for $100, you’ll be able to buy one at today’s prices.
In trying to preserve my legal documents and other paperwork that is impossible to replace, my scanner became a valuable tool for me. I scanned our wills, our deed to the house, health insurance papers, retirement paperwork, social security cards, birth certificates, and marriage certificate, just to name a few. You may recall that before people were allowed to re-enter their homes in hurricane areas, people had to provide proof that they owned the home. With thousands of homeless people looking for housing, it was important that no one else was given access to your home.
Memory Sticks. Sometimes people call these “thumb drives,” because some of them are about the size of your thumb. They plug right into the USB port of your computer. I have one that holds 4 GB of information and can backup loads of photos and documents.. They’re more reliable than CDs and you generally don’t need to install anything to use it in another computer. I used this stick to back up my financial information from MS Money and my family history files. In addition to preserving all of these things on the internet, I also backed up what I could on my memory stick. That way I had a backup for the backup.
As I worked to gather my information, I spent several days just going through files and thinking of paperwork that would be important to prove my identity. I also took my own personal copy of my book, All They’ll Need to Know, which contained all of the information my family would need if I didn’t survive. It would tell them where to locate the will and how to plan my funeral. It would also give them the names of people to contact. Everything was scanned, backed up or uploaded. Then, I took all of the original documents and sealed them in plastic with my Food Saver, and took them to the bank to place in my safe deposit box. A few years ago when Houston was flooded from Tropical Storm Allison, I learned how important it is to waterproof my documents. I had items in a safe deposit box that was in the underground area of my bank. When flood waters rushed through the tunnels of downtown Houston, all of those safe deposit boxes were filled with contaminated water. Fortunately, my paperwork was protected, but others were not so fortunate. One man had stored his prized baseball card in his safe deposit box and it was now worthless. If you don’t have a Food Saver, you can at least use Ziploc bags.
If time allows, consider going through your collection of letters and cards. I had baptismal records and other things I wanted to preserve. I scanned them and left them in my home, but at least I knew that if they were destroyed, I at least had copies containing dates and numbers.
The ideas I have given you today are pretty general because of the amount of time allowed on this call. I’d invite you to visit my website at www.emersonpublications.com and review the information in my blog about our own pending evacuation. Living through it was a real learning experience for me, and I hope it serves as a warning to everyone who reads it. You can see why I encourage you to start on this project now. Don’t wait until you’re only left with a minute or two to run out of your house.
The old saying, “A stitch in time saves nine,” really applies here. If you take the time to gather and preserve this information now, it will save you months, and possibly years of trying to recreate the information and make claim on what’s rightfully yours. Learn from the experiences of others. Prepare yourself and your household now. I hope and pray that this is an exercise you’ll never need to use, but like an insurance policy, you’re sure glad to have it if you need it!
Joyce Moseley Pierce is a contributing author to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. She’s the creator of All They’ll Need to Know and owner of Emerson Publications. She’s the Family Preparedness Expert for Ideamarketers.com as well as WomenLovingLifeWorldwide.com. Visit www.emersonpublications.com or www.preparedineveryway.com to learn more. Follow Joyce on Twitter @piercejam.
Tags: emergency, family, paper, photos, prepare, preserve, records