apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Be prepared for the concept that you might not have any sort of buffer of time like 10 minutes or even 2 minutes to get out safely. Shape your reactions to take all fire alarms seriously instead of thinking they are probably nothing. Dismissing an alarm and then reacting when it turns out to be something is going to waste a lot of time and compromise your safety. Reacting to an alarm and getting to dismiss it when it turns out to be nothing (hopefully) is the right order of things.

These are all great ideas...

...but they won't do a lick of good if the fire/earthquake happens when you're not home.

Any ideas for that eventuality?

I agree that one should be prepared ... but a suitcase by your door at all times?

A life lived in fear is a life half lived.

I'd grab my husband, cats, passport and purse.

Done.

Everything that is necessary can be replaced and everything that is a luxury or momento is worth losing for your life.

id imagin if you should also have a backup for if you're not home:

have some neighbor/s who will get your pets, hard drives, etc.

keep an emergency bag in in your car/office

have a reliable, distant friend/family keep copies of papers and such

safety deposit box for originals/valuables

store photos online

the only things i would grab that were non-essential would be the 4 hand-made quilts that my mom and grandmas have made for me along with my box of photos and negatives and my design portfolio. Those are the things i have that cant be replaced (in that order too!)

The given idea list is actually kind of scary. You can buy games at the store. Red Cross will actually give you a voucher for clothes. Making every kid you have some pack of comfort and amusement and getting them out the doors or windows in a panic seems an incredible feat, even for the prepared. This list of must-haves seems to account for time to make several trips to the car and lots of hands to help and stay calm. Just a cat carrier is a handful, and you have suitcases, packs of games for the kids, your iPod, your kids, your pets, a file of important papers, a stash of money, and time to put your clothes on so you're not naked when you get out to the sidewalk outside of a burning building, plus something to change into when you crap yourself from fear.

Maybe if the town is advising an evacuation, for a flood or fires headed toward you at the rate of maybe an hour, or hurricanes which may at the last moment veer in another direction and skip you entirely, or possibly a movie version of a gas explosion in a nearby apartment, you have time for any of that. Sure, I buy being prepared as suggested for slow-moving disasters.

I have a binder full of important information (insurance info, medical records, copies of our passports, a basic list of all of our belongings and their value, copies of receipts from expensive purchases, etc) that I keep with a trusted relative out of state. That way if something happens I'll have reference materials that are safe.

Our originals are in a fire/water proof, locked safe so hopefully we can get at the originals later (if for some reason we can't bring it out with us, or the emergency happens when we're not at home). She has the extra key to this.

I've also given her our important sentimental things too, like a second copy of our wedding album and home videos.

I went through a fire about 20 years ago. It happened so quickly. I didn't take anything with me because by the time I realized what was happening --- it was time to get out. I couldn't find the cat so I left the door open and hoped he would find his way out. (He did. His fur was singed but he was alive.)

The best way to prepare in advance is to have insurance and pictures of your "stuff" at another location.

I agree KTC.

I was downton on 9/11 and when we had to run for it, I grabbed my purse and made sure my friend was right with me.

Granted being prepared is a great luxury -- but I think all this preparedness is propoganda promoting fear.

The fact is Mother Nature is fierce and when it comes down to documents or your life -- you will chose your life.

Not unless you are totally crazy.

Forgot to mention: We keep a back up of all the info on our computers in each as well (in the safe and with the relative). The info in our safe we update once a month. With the relative, once or twice a year.

That way we don't worry about lugging four computers around during an emergency, only two of which are laptops (my husband's a techie, so three of the 'puters are his). They can be replaced easily enough, but the information on them can't.

I was also in a fire almost 12 years ago and didn't have time to escape, and I couldn't go out the front door. Having a stash of games and extra clothes are kind of luxuries in that sort of event, but if you have evacuation warning and have some idea you're traveling to a makeshift shelter or hotel out of town or grandma's, etc., it's probably a keen idea to have some small set of priorities higher than "everyone out safely, immediately."

I was lucky enough to be dressed (well enough for 4am in March) and grabbed my parka while sliding on boots, put my wallet in my pocket and have someone help me and my neighbor who came in the inside window down the fire escape which was attached to an adjacent building, and for my cats to still be alive when we were allowed to re-enter, due to the blaze itself containing it to the other half of the building. My neighbor was wearing a nightshirt and maybe sneakers and a leather jacket, but his cats were also still ok, and I think he got on tv.

I find it amusing/sad that MFlick will choose to save 4 quilts. Talk about a handful! Four decorative quilts is at least two trips to the car and won't serve much purpose in an emergency. I bet his/her mom and grandmas would want MFlick to leave the quilts and vacate the burning building.

*I did have time to escape - I meant to say escape with much more than myself, escape with time to look around and grab important things. A place fills with smoke, so even if I had made up a suitcase, it would have been difficult to find and extraneous matter going down the fire escape.

The best way to save some of the things you need/love is to already have them elsewhere since it's not likely you will be able to take them...for us, I think we'd have our hands full with squirming angry cats and no time to worry about other stuff. And remember, even if you have everything neatly packed and your car stocked, you may not get to drive out due to blocked roads, etc. (just think about New Orleans), so you really want your essentials to be stuff you can carry if need be.

If you have the option to keep things at your office and it's not super close to your home, it's another great place for a spare hard drive with photos and documents and a file with copies of the important stuff. Not great if the whole city is leveled, but works just fine for an apartment fire. There's also the option of a safe deposit box for things like documents and family jewelry you hardly ever use.

As for having an evacuation kit, I would just suggest keeping an overnight bag with essentials in your car anyway, along with plenty of water, since it's great for unexpected sleepovers, breakdowns on long drives, etc., as well. Spare chargers for electronics are wonderful things and not very expensive for the amount of hassle they will save you in life generally.

Those fire proof safes do work... friends of ours had one survive the big Malibu fires... BUT, the heat destroyed the locking mechanism and it took them ages to break the thing open and get their slightly crispy documents and jewelry out.

I don't think this is all that paranoid. The house behind ours burned down when I was a kid, and one a block up the street a few years later. When we signed up for renters' insurance I asked what their most common claims were and they said catastrophic losses from fires.

Here are some things I'm thinking about after last week's fires:

Taking a video of the interior and exterior of my house, describing items and keeping it in a safe deposit box at the bank.

Gathering together receipts of the most expensive items in my house (tv's, upgrades, furniture, art, etc.) and keeping that in a safe deposit box too.

Posting a sticker or sign in a front window that tells firefighters that I have dogs.

Make friends with neighbors and give them a key especially if you have pets.

Figure out where the gas turn off is for my house.

Put all important papers that need to stay at the house together near the door and all important papers that do not need to stay with me in the safe deposit box.

Keep a list of the things I would want to save if I had the chance ranked by importance - the more time I have, the more I can grab.

If you have minutes, just get out. But some of the people displaced this week had several hours to pack up.

My good friend had her two next door neighbors homes burn to the ground in Yorba Linda. Her house did not burn but her mom was babysitting her kids and didn't know where anything was to grab as she was leaving. She took the kids, a few family photos, and the dog. Sometimes that's enough and more than others are lucky enough to grab.

i'm in brooklyn and my cousin was visiting me last week - she has a new home in montecito with her husband (both mainly live in italy), not two streets over from the final evacuation warning line.

not only did we flip out the entire week reading the news and calling her dad in santa barbara, but i had to listen to her on her phone as she instructed her dad what to grab - doing a mental walk through of her home. scary!

ultimately, it was her art, old designs and illustrations, and the cars. thankfully, all is well now, but her dad too had to evacuate his santa barbara house and they thought for sure this was it (they've had a few close calls over the years). he had time to pack up a lot of stuff and get his cats into a pet hotel, but thankfully he was able to go home within 48 hours.

last year there was a fire two apartments down from me and being that it's my biggest fear you'd think i'd be more prepared - i don't even have cat carriers for my cats!

again, we were lucky with not even smoke damage, but 4G was toast. the guy had left his iron on...

...and also really enjoyed collecting decades of newspapers...

yeah.

I'm surprised by all the cranky people commenting. This list is exactly what all the disaster preparedness folks tell you to have. Sure, maybe you can get VOUCHERS for clothes, but that doesn't mean you'll be able to get clothes. Or toys. If, for example, San Francisco gets leveled by an earthquake, I'm going to want to have some creature comforts while I'm praying that WAS the big one, not a foreshock.

speaking of the fires last night, my dad became upset when I stated that if my childhoom homes burned away with everything we owned, I wouldn't care as long as my family and pets was safe. He said that I was wrong and it would be a trajedy to lose things we own. It reminded me of how attached he is to crap. I have a strange questions - should one keep gold as part of their emergency money? I know it seems so apocalyptic to think that our economy would collapse to the point of greenbacks becoming useless - but it has happened before.

Creature comforts matter if you have time to save them and yourself. Don't be silly, Tiamat. If you don't have time or hands to grab things, you will be lucky enough to get out without them, so there's no crankiness here. If you want to bring a set of jammies and your iPod to the shelter, I hope you have a slow-moving disaster.

(or none, I meant to add).

I work in San Francisco where we are always expecting "The Big One." Each employee has Grab-n-Go Kit (very small duffel bag) under their desk which contains -

emergency water packets
1 2400 Calorie food bar
1 emergency blanket (those silvery ones)
3 12 hour light sticks
flat whistle
pocket first aid kit
hygiene kit

These are given out by my employer. I would probably also like to have some kind of utility knife or multi tool in an emergency as well. And maybe some candles and a flashlight.

I second the importance of being prepared at work. We spend a lot of time in our offices and it's just about as likely that when disaster strikes, we'll be there instead of at home.

I work for the Red Cross and am lucky enough to have a 10-person disaster kit under my desk. But if you're looking to take just a teensy step towards being ready, you might consider the $5 safety tube, which can be dropped under a workspace (or in a glovebox or just about anywhere).

See it for yourself here:
http://www.redcrossstore.org/Shopper/Product.aspx?UniqueItemId=92&Page=1&StartAtPage=1&SId=375339&LocationId=0

[On a side note, our little chapter here in Portland invented the safety tube, which later went on to be featured in MOMA's SAFE: Design Takes On Risk exhibit in 2005: http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2005/safe.html
This was way before my time, but I do think it's pretty darned cool.]

The house behind ours burnt down earlier this year... from start to finish the whole event took less than eight minutes... and ended with a massive gas explosion. It was a shocking realization that it could take me that long just to get my kids to say "what's up?", let alone get them all out of the house. Really there would be no time to collect anything other than grab my kids and run - all at once, no going back for stragglers. Forget stuff, forget a special box of papers or anything. Seriously, people before things. Grab your kids and get out.

One should follow up this cheerful posting with a read of Cormack McCarthy's 'The Road'. Puts in perspective what is important and what is not.

This is an interesting and emotional discussion.

I think it really boils down to what to do when you have time to react and when you don't.

Everyone should prepare in whatever way they need to and feel comfortable with, without getting too into the fear part of potential emergencies. And then realize that, certainly, if it's between saving a life or a beloved object, or even important documents, people and pets always come first.

I'd like to think that judging by the condition of our 1930's flat, its held up very well in many earthquakes here in bayarea.

I am scared and anticipating the big one soon, why do people think they are always going to be home when something happens?
I was in the 2nd floor of a classroom at school 40 mins away from my home in a recent earthquake.

I did a top 5 in my head when I heard about the LA Fires.

My fiance, cats, dog, my engagement ring, and my laptop.

For those who do not live in Southern California, sometimes you have some warning that there is a brush fire heading your way. I know people who have all the things suggested above, that have had time to load up their car and are ready to go when the word comes to evacuate. HOWEVER, I doubt anyone who's home/trees/street is on fire, wastes any time other than grabbing their children, pets and car keys.

I was at work on 9/11 and had to assemble some critical items very quickly because, unlike most people, "home" was not a place I could go. Here are some "lessons learned."

One trick, taken from longstanding technology practice, is offsite storage. Get a cheap pocket sized hard drive, or a jump drive, scan and encrypt your critical documents, and store it somewhere other than your house - your office, a friend's. Keep your contacts in it or on-line. Don't store confidential documents in Gmail - it isn't secure because it indexes your results. MobileMe is a good idea but Apple needs to get the kinks out first.

Always carry a week's worth of meds with you and replace them a couple of times a year. Period. Emergency preparedness agencies do NOT stock them and pharmacies will NOT give you anything without a prescription.

Keep a "Go Bag" with 3 days worth of clothes, food, cash and water in an easily accessible place near your door and grab it if you need to leave. There was a multi-alarm fire in my building a couple of weeks ago and I grabbed it from the closet and was out the door without missing a beat.

Having dealt with the Red Cross after 9/11, I, personally, would not trust that organization to do anything right, ever. Assume that you're on your own for the first few days after a disaster.

As a warning: this is a very emotional topic for me. I’m going to avoid being cranky about some of the glib “people before things” comments since I think we can all agree that should always be the case. But life is rarely so black and white (and god help us all when it is). So trust me on this one, because unfortunately I know: after the initial shock of a disaster has worn off, and you're in your new living situation, having a few of your "creature comforts" does a world of good.

But let's back up: I’ll let my year-old self, still in shock 2 days after Thanksgiving 2007, set up my story. This is more or less what all my emails the week after the fire said -
“K.C. [my bf] and I awoke at 3am to a loud phone ringing, ‘Look outside, it’s coming’ was all our neighbor was able to get out before K.C. was up and dressed before I had even found my glasses on the nightstand and realized that I smelled smoke. A moment later, all sleepiness gone in a frightened wave of adrenaline, I rushed out onto the deck and saw a canyon-wide band of fire light up the night just up the hill from us, advancing fast with the fiercely blowing Santa Anas. It was the most terrifying sight I have ever witnessed with my own eyes.

We had an hour before the flames were within 100 yards, and we loaded up as much as we could and fled down the hill.

And now K.C.’s Malibu home is gone - K.C. and I just saw the live helicopter footage of our ashen smoking lot - with K.C.'s old car in the driveway, just a metal husk. The two homes next to K.C.'s burned as well, the other houses nearby still stand. It was almost worse to watch the footage than to have only imagined it.

We're both doing okay; we occasionally remember something we didn't save - the great kitchen knives, K.C.'s four bikes and camping equipment, my cookbooks, silly stuff like that...anyway, we're healthy and safe but will probably begin to realize the little
haven we lost in the week to come.”

Here’s what I learned in that hour of forced calm and in hindsight:
Keep your head: control your breathing, pay attention to your thoughts and what is going on around you. Stay alert but move with deliberate action. When I felt like the fires were too close for my comfort (we kept a watchful eye on the advance of the flames and were well aware when advanced wind-blown patches started to flare up nearby) I calmly but firmly said it was time for me to go.

Prepare to lose electricity: Since this whole melee went down in the dark, the first thing we did was put on our LED head lamps (or have a flashlight with you). The electricity can go out at any moment, and you don’t want to get caught in the dark.

If you live in an area where fires can happen, which right now seems like pretty much anywhere in Southern California, you’ve thought ahead of time what you’ll take (again, only if time allows). This included for us: important files, computer, harddrives, enough clothes for a few days (at least), pictures, and jewelry (it’s expensive, and takes up little space, so take it). Hopefully you’ve discussed with your partner who’s going to grab what and load what into which vehicle. We had actually done a run-through a month before when there were fires a few miles away and when the actual moment of truth occurred, we didn’t waste time discussing who was in charge of what.
As mentioned above, one of the things that we forgot was the camping gear. It was in a closet I didn’t know about, and K.C. just didn’t think to grab it this time. It contained decades of collected and beloved gear. It was shockingly expensive to replace everything! If you’re the outdoorsy type, camping gear is good for evacuations because it’s naturally made to travel with, and it’s a lot of expensive stuff in a small enough volume. Also, the kitchen we almost totally neglected, and I wish we’d grabbed the aforementioned knives (an amazing sale at Costco, alas), a very expensive juicer, and some pottery that my dad made, and I still mourn my collection of favorite magazine recipes kept in a folder. I mention these details so you may think of the sometimes taken-for-granted quality-of-life items that you've amassed over the years. For fire-prone areas, the list by the door is a good idea. I wish we'd had one.

Also, the way my mind worked under the stress of an impending firestorm was not characteristic of me; and I say this as someone who has followed firefighters into dangerous situations and been in a riot in India (I’m a documentary camera person so it comes with the job). Here’s what surprised me: I left some clothes and personal items behind as a promise to fate and myself that all would be okay. I’m not a superstitious person, but that’s how the stress of the situation played out for me. It’s easy to toss off a simple “clothes are replaceable.” Well, on one hand, I guess they are. But to build a wardrobe of beloved, comfortable pieces takes time and money. I’m glad I loaded the trunk of my car with my favorite clothes. A year later, I still miss a few sweaters that burned up! I know it's silly, but I'm being honest so there it is. RIP kelly green zip up, RIP brown ankle-length sweater. Also, I’m very glad we grabbed our expensive winter coats and rain gear. As a couple without children or pets, we obviously focused on getting our stuff out.

On another note, while I started loading the cars, K.C. went around the block and knocked on all the neighbors’ doors to alert them to the fire. If you live in a fire-prone area, know your neighbors. You may need one another in instances like this.

As for insurance and preparation – as someone earlier mentioned, I recommend taking video or pictures of each room of your house and keeping it in a safety box away from your house. If you live in an earthquake, flood, or fire prone area, this is very important. When you have to total up everything you lost, it’s hard to remember room to room, drawer to drawer, what all you had. Also keep all medium to large receipts; my boyfriend spent a painful few days digging through old files to amass all his receipts to show to the insurance company but it was necessary. Insurance companies do not, as a general rule, want to make getting money from them easy; there will be a lot of hoops to jump through, so be prepared.

A year later I’m still surprised at how deeply that day affected me. It wasn’t my house; I didn’t have all my furniture inside it, just parts of my melded life with my boyfriend. I cannot imagine how the victims of the various fires around L.A. and in Orange County are coping right now, especially those with kids and pets. Personally, I was in a strange state of shock for weeks afterwards, and kept walking through the house in my mind while it was on fire, watching furniture, curtains, the white duvet on the bed burst into flames. Whenever I shut my eyes, that inferno would appear. I mourned the house and the life it represented as if a family member had died.

As the anniversary of the fire approaches, I find myself edgy and sad on and off throughout the day. Yes, it was just "stuff" that we lost, but it brought me uncomfortably close to the fact that life can change irrevocably with little warning and no care for who and what you are. There were positive lessons learned; the destruction showed me that my boyfriend and I can lean on one another in hard times, and grow together through adversity. I'm more gentle with others and myself now because I saw how total and final destruction can be and it was humbling.

As I said at the beginning, let me say again that I also know it would have been much, much worse if we had lost all of our possessions.

From someone who wished she didn’t have this bit of wisdom to share, I would not recommend letting your life be ruled by fear, but never thinking or planning for something unpleasant isn’t the wisest course of action either.

-Vanessa
huntpeck.blogspot.com

Also, forgot to mention, with my perspective ever-so-subtly shifted after the fire last year (maybe more accurate would be "torn apart and put back together haphazardly"), I felt compelled to open a discussion with my family about donating to charities for Christmas instead of giving a slew of gifts to one another. And although it was fun for most of us, this year we've decided to make it giver's choice; those who really love giving gifts can (my brother is indeed a fabulous gift-giver), but most of us will again be giving a charitable and a homemade gift. Last year was the first year I've not felt forced to buy something in the name of the season and I'm looking forward to picking out charities again this year!

Last year I used these two websites to help me choose good, effective charities:
http://charitynavigator.org/
http://charitywatch.org/

-Vanessa

I have only been affected by slow-moving disasters. Three major hurricanes in the past 4 years. They are easier to prepare for than a fire or tornado. But sometimes you just don't know what to take with you, still. This year I was affected by Gustav (a storm that national news brushed off). The entire state was out of electricity for over a week. There were no grocery stores open, no gas stations, tens of thousands of trees in the street (just in Baton Rouge), and power lines and street lights knocked over. The streets were undrivable for a week or more. Noone I know died, and I didn't starve. It wasn't another Katrina, but it was very destructive. Every single tree fell over in my yard, and the state capitol lost its last 250 year old tree, the Thomas Boyd oak.
So what will I do better next time? I had enough batteries, candles, and dried and canned food. Definitely need more alcohol and chocolate.

Vanessa, I am so sorry about your devastating experience. I don't mean to make light about serious danger and life/death/stuff choices people think they can make in a moment or an hour. I can say 12 years later that I am not the same person, that my experience changed the course of my life and had I known the choices I would make would be such a burden to me now, I would do everything differently. I would stick it out and not move home with my parents!

I got to keep a lot of stuff in the end, as my apartment was smoke-damaged, and sometimes that's a bad thing. I lost a few things like serious jewelry, they were possibly looted or just not where I thought they were, and things that were just too messed up to carry, but me and my parents carried worthless things, picked them up in the dark and cold, carried them down the narrow winding staircase and loaded them on a truck, so I could still have stuff I thought was still good, that I would need again only to realize later that that had a cost as well.

Losing everything is bad, and I can imagine your grief for the things you did not choose to bring. Having too much time to make choices... will always make you think of something too late and it will be lost. It might not matter how much or how little you could grab in your arms or throw in bags or store at the office after all, if you have any amount of time to consider what's important, you will always have to leave everything else behind you. What you considered mere possessions during an emergency are irreplaceable treasures when you regret that "five more minutes" to go back and get it that you were denied. I'm glad for you to have a supportive family and I hope if you need counseling, you are receiving it adequately.

Thanks for the information on the charities. ~K T G

Those who suggested keeping photos elsewhere, I've photographed all my expensive books and e-mailed the pix to myself. You can do it with any expensive items and not worry about keeping track of disks b/c it's all online.

it's like childbirth: until you've gone through it, it's all theoretical. paraphrased from cote de texas' blog comments post hurricane.

as with childbirth, preparation is key, but no two women have the same experience, nor does one woman have the same experience with subsequent births.

the florida fires of 1998 were overwhelmingly stressful, and ended with friends' families camping out in our living room. we lived in one of the few unevacuated neighborhoods in our county, and i still gathered artwork, photos and documents, and hauled them to another friend's home (bordered by the river and the ocean). when UPS, the airport and post office suspended operations, and NASCAR canceled a major race, i developed insomnia.

everyone was attempting to ignore the approaching fires by maintaining normal schedules. we were at the gym when members were summoned to the front desk, one by one. as the class size diminished, i motioned to my son that we were leaving. the instructor loaded all her cds/tapes into my car trunk, and we watched an armageddon like evacuation take place from the west. there are no videos of this event (everyone was focused on escaping), but all west-bound lanes became east-bound (towards the oceanside), with anxious-crazy drivers straddling the sidewalks and medians to allow fire trucks passage westbound.

from fires to hurricanes: seasonal and unpredictable, with fridges full of $$food subject to power outages (you're stuck with a boring and time-consuming wait and mess post-storm). after 4 back-to-back in 2004, i developed a preparation strategy: keep the car tank FULL; fill ziploc bags with water, and freeze for ice chests (ICE is non-existent post-storm); fill the bathtub with water to flush toilets if water supply vanishes; cell phone charger for your CAR (hopefully you have access to 2 vehicles, and battery charging cables); an inverter to get power from your car's battery to power a fan/hotpot/hot plate or griddle (restaurants are closed); gallons and gallons of cheap, safe distilled water for drinking. before the power goes out (just watch the path of the storm), i boil water and fill several thermoses for morning coffee and cup-o-noodles. make sure you have a week's worth of clothing, batteries, paper plates, chlorine. if the water supply is contaminated, you don't want to use it to wash dishes.

cash on hand, of course, and pre-pay bills online.

yes, lives are most important, but comfort post disaster is, well, comfort.

WOW PEOPLE, this isn't worth a debate.

Do not live in fear, but a failure to plan is a plan for failure. For the first few days after a disaster, YOU WILL BE ON YOUR OWN. Spend 10 minutes this weekend putting together a flashlight, can opener, passport copies, etc. in a small plastic tub. Put it in a coat closet or your trunk, and forget about it. No fear. Just a feeling of "if something happens i don't need to panic."
You got an old board game for the kids? Throw it in there too. Better they play travel yahtzee than look out the back window at whatever your impending disaster may be.