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Email a FriendWe live in the south and have evacuated for a couple of hurricanes. We took our firebox filled with important papers. I tried to take my photo albums with me but there were too many. I like your mom’s idea of scanning the photos onto CD. I have all my digitals on CD so now I think I’ll work on scanning the others. That will be a big project! I also read a blog recently about taking love letters. I think next time we evacuate I will do that too. All the cards and letters (absolute treasures) my husband has given me since we dated are in a box and I definately want those. With our last evacuation, we realized how unprepared we were to leave. I have been practicing and am pretty detached from most material things but at the thought of loosing my house I teared up. In the end, all was well and it serves as a reminder to be better prepared and to continue practicing detachment.
What Would You Take?
Posted by Lisa Hendey in Homemaking on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 2:00 PM
This past weekend, my mom and I visited Southern California and spent Saturday at Disneyland. I hope to share a few photos of our trip this week, but today, a more serious topic is on my heart.
As you’ve likely heard, horrific wildfires are ravaging Southern California this week. The picture you see here was taken at Disneyland on Saturday - although we were a safe distance from the fire, the sky over Disneyland had an apocalyptic hue and ash “rained” down on us all day. It felt sort of wrong having so much fun when I knew that a few miles away, families’ homes were being destroyed.
The experience of being so close to the fires reminded me once again that we all need to have good plans in place for dealing with emergencies. Do you have a family fire safety plan? Have you reviewed your homeowners’ insurance policy to make sure your coverage is up to date? Have you done a home inventory?
All weekend long, the news stations carried non-stop broadcasting of the fires. They showed families being evacuated from their homes with a moments’ notice. Most of them only had a few minutes to grab one or two items and run.
The coverage led us to have a long conversation about what we would grab from our homes if we only had five minutes to leave. My mother and father have all of their important papers in a metal file box, so my mom said she would grab that box and the CDs of scanned family photos. I’m still trying to make up my mind what I’d grab, which tells me that I have some business to take care of in readying our home in the event of a disaster.
If you were given five minutes to leave your home and knew you could lose everything material in your life, what would you take with you? Have you had to evacuate your home due to a fire or storm? What advice can you share with our Faith and Family friends for making sure we keep our families safe and protected?
Comments
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Once everyone was safe…I would take my kids’ baby boxes (with their baptismal certificates and candles) and photos if I could grab them quickly. My laptop if it was handy. Otherwise…it’s all stuff.
Most everything in my house is replaceable but there are a few treasures. If I had time after the kids got out, I would get the painting of my grandpa holding my eldest, my grandmother’s tea cups, and the rosaries from my husband’s grandma. If I had time and muscles, I would get the box w/ my grandparent’s creche from the basement.
We do have a fire safety plan but thanks for the reminder because the younger children are old enough now that we should revisit this. In fact, I should put it on the calendar as a regularly scheduled event so it’s always fresh in everyone’s minds.
Our first and second class relics, the photo albums, important documents, and the laptop. Thanks for the idea on the laptop; I had not included it before, but with many of our photos kept in it instead of in an album, it would be high on the list. I’m sure i am missing somethings I would regret, so perhaps it is time to contemplate this more seriously.
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