When disaster strikes and you need to evacuate your home or office immediately, there’s only one thing you need to reach for before you leave (besides your family, of course!) —your “grab and go” emergency binder. Your binder should contain all your important information, valuable documents, and anything else you might need in the event you aren’t able to return home right away.
Decide what you need
Start by gathering all the essentials you’ll want inside your emergency binder. Not sure what to include? Here are some key things to consider:
- Cash—Place a stockpile of cash inside a secure plastic pouch to cover any necessities you may need to purchase. Cash always comes in handy when credit cards aren’t accepted, or if ATMs aren’t working or are depleted of cash.
- Documents—Birth certificates, marriage certificates, Social Security cards, car titles and other important documents should be sealed up safe inside.
- Medication—Keep a list of existing medication, prescriptions and an emergency supply of other health needs for you and the whole family in a waterproof storage bag and attach it to your binder.
- Photos—Keep duplicates of old and treasured photos of your ancestors and other precious family photos in case you don’t have time to grab your photo albums.
- Computer files—Save a backup of important documents or personal digital memories from your computer onto a CD or DVD for safekeeping.
- Contacts—Make sure you have your important contacts safe.
Do you know where all your vital record information is? Is it in one place that you can grab and go in case of a fire, flood, or any other kind of emergency? If not, then we would like to issue a challenge for you! Don’t feel overwhelmed, we are doing this challenge right along with you. We will be organizing our Vital Records Binder at the same time. We will be breaking down the above information into 6 separate postings to give you enough time in between each one so that it is a realistic goal to make and accomplish.
CHALLENGE: Your challenge this week to get a binder and some tabs.
