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The Palisades fires, like every fire, have me thinking—
When I was a very young child, my elementary school caught on fire. The K-2 building was annexed, and as the fire ravaged the main building, the 4-8 students piled into the our building while we waited for our parents to pick us up. It was chaos and it really traumatized me. I went home that night and strangely packed a bag full of my most important things, just in case my house ever caught fire. As an adult, I still keep things well organized, just in case. I know everyone says they’d grab pictures. I’d grab pictures, memory cards, important documents, bins with keepsakes, important meds, as many clothes as I could, and honestly, that’s probably it. I’m curious if you have a plan. It doesn’t even have to be for a fire. What would you grab in an emergency if you had to flee in five minutes? |
| Family photos and a box of letters from a childhood friend/first love. Everything else is replaceable with some effort. |
| Laptop with pics, maybe meds and appropriate outer wear. |
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Kids
Good shoes and coat The go bag |
I should add that I already lost a lot of my belongings including most photos in a house fire before I graduated from college. The photos are what still hurt over three decades later. |
| We are in a hurricane area so yes: our pets, a small crate with documents/passports/keepsake albums, some clothes, dh's family candlesticks and my jewelry box. That's pretty much it. |
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well I am wondering this now in LA having seen the map of the fires, if they keep moving inland we will be surrounded in Glendale.
We'll take the kids, the pets and our passports. what else do we need? nothing. |
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My house caught on fire about 7 months ago. In the first minute when I noticed, as I was waiting to connect to 911, I started to try and gather my important documents like my birth certificate and passports. After about 30 seconds of this I thought f**k it, I have to get my dog out of the house before I worry about any of this. I tried to grab my purse and computer but in the end I only made it outside with myself, my dog, and my phone. I wasn't even wearing shoes or a bra.
I know this is different than having a few minutes, and luckily the fire department was awesome and I had very little loss, but what I learned from the situation is that I really needed to get organized and have an immediate-ready-grab folder or box. |
| My dog, my phone, our wedding album. |
| Very little. My kids are still attached to their stuff so I’d help them as much as possible, but I have very little attachment to things. All the photos are double backed up in the cloud. But I’m actively in the process of minimizing our stuff so I’ve read and thought a lot about this. |
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My cats, and it would probably take 5 minutes to find them if they were freaking out or hiding.
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| Assuming it was just me, my wife's and daughter's beloved childhood stuffies. |
| My kids and pets. Oh, and probably my spouse as well. |
La Canada Flintridge just ordered evacuations of the entire town. Was also thinking about this. Family, pets, then if room in the car, my grandmother's silver and two oil landscapes painted by a family member who was extremely talented though never a name as she never made any efforts to do anything but paint what she liked to paint. Everything else can be replaced. |
| Purse, phone, charger, keys, Safe deposit box (cash, passports, documents) with key to it (putting key on key ring now). |