During the Waldo Canyon Fire I wrote a post about being prepared for an emergency. This article I just read has some more great tips on being prepared and I think it’s really informative and important information…and now that we’ve gone through the process, I have a few tips of my own.
With the Waldo Canyon Fire, my husband and I actually realized that if a disaster or emergency occurred where we had to evacuate in a hurry, we would not have been prepared. For example, we have four cats but I only keep one of our carriers in an easy to reach location because I usually only take one cat at a time to the vet. When we were packing up in case we had to evacuate for the fire, I had to hunt in our storage area (in the house) for the other carriers and it took me some time. And it literally took me hours to find all of our important paperwork because I haven’t been that great with keeping paperwork filed…since starting our website I have a huge stack of papers that just keeps getting bigger! Now we actually have all of our important stuff in one crate and in a small, fire-proof safe. And if you haven’t checked your insurance policy in a while, perhaps you should pull it out and make sure you have enough coverage or aren’t paying more than what you need to. I personally had to pull my home insurance policy out (because I own a rental home in Mountain Shadows) and found out that I had not updated it after my husband and I got married and I rented the house out. To be honest, I had not looked at it since the day it was purchased, TEN years ago! I was still paying for “content” coverage when I didn’t need to be because I don’t have any contents in the house anymore! You should actually check your policy once a year and update it if need be.
Before the fire, we had already started working on getting all of our old photos from years past scanned and put on discs, (for our kids and because we had a lot that were fading and didn’t want to lose all those photos of family and friends that can’t be replaced), now we’re doing that whenever we have extra time.
Never in my wildest imagination did I ever think that I personally would live somewhere where this type of disaster hit. You see things like that on TV but don’t think it might happen to you. (At least for me.) Being prepared doesn’t mean being paranoid. You may not live in an area where a wildfire might occur, but the weather has been crazy this year and hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, etc. are happening all across our country and if just a little bit of preparedness could get you out faster and with the items you need and want in case you had to evacuate, I think it’s worth it. Just having some peace of mind is worth it to me!
*I know that not everyone is in a position to have several months of money saved in case of an emergency, but putting just a small amount aside when possible is a great goal to have…this helps not only with disasters and emergencies but in case of a lay-off or medical problems.
**And on a personal note, I happen to have Farmers Insurance and they were wonderful about helping me out during the process of making sure the home was safe and taking care of the problems that needed to be addressed…thanks Alonzo!