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I'd save myself and whomever else was in the house.

I would not risk my life to save one single thing. Nothing. Not even my eyeglasses, which I NEED.

NOTHING.

computer hard-drive, audrey kawasaki prints, my husband, the dogs, and myself.

Myself, my husband, my two cats, most likely a computer and if there is enough time, try to grab the old photo albums.

open my window throw all the stuff i want and jet out the window and land on the stuff

Wallet with Passport & Credit Cards
Laptop
Cellphone
Signed and numbered Stephen Card prints
Jewelry

Everything else is replaceable and insured.

pup pups x 2
kit cat x 1

everything else? burn baby burn.. it's insured

Passport/Documents (otherwise may be in limbo)
Journals
Sketchbooks from Italy
Mac
Eeyore

laptop, carkeys, glasses,
whatever I can cram into my purse.

my fat cat
boyfriend although i'm sure he could manage on his own.

Family, pets and a credit card

I agree that I would just get my ass out with my dog (who is a person, not a thing) and husband, but for the sake of playing the game...
1. Wedding photos (on cd)
2. Personal papers like ss card, birth cert, etc., which are already bundled
3. Glasses (which are always next to me)
4. Quilt that my dead great-grandmother made for my wedding. She died almost ten years before I got married. Actually this would be the first thing I would grab.
5. Can't think of anything else...

Cat
Purse
Glasses

I think the Olympian was making a point about the officiating. I actually had to grab and go when the garage behind an apt. I was staying in was set on fire by a guy who got into a pissing match with the apt. owner that day. The owner had lumber stored in it and it was HOT when it was on fire around 12:15 AM. I was woken up by a piece of lumber falling and almost didn't get up to investigate, but once I saw the fire, I called 911 on my cell, back when the call went to NYC and I was in Sacramento, about 3 blocks from the fire dept.

What I grabbed were shorts to put under the T-shirt I was sleeping in, my cell and shoes from my walk that evening. I left my clothes that I had taken out of the car, my brief case with my laptop and my purse. As I ran down the stairs, I called the landlord who lived about 3 houses away. A minute later, he was crossing the street, asking why didn't I call him, right after I talked with him. He had been drinking wine that evening, before I went on the walk, after I had gotten the keys for my first night in the apt.

The point of all this, is if it happens when you are asleep, you won't be thinking clearly. Luckily, my two kiddies were at Grandma and Grandpaw's house in So Cal. My clothes got drycleaned and my briefcase was rescued by the firefighters. The apt. never caught fire, thankfully, just the detached garage.

I've been in a fire. There's not really any time if there's smoke coming under the door. It's kind of a stupid question to ask.

I would save my pets...stuff can always be replaced.

Aside from the people who I live with (and yes, I mean humans when I say "people". I don't have any pets, nor do I call them people)

I'd grab my:

MacBook Pro
1965 Rogers Powertone Snare Drum (wood shell, perfect condition, rare drum... not really replaceable)
Wallet
Life-long photo album that my grandma made me when I graduated college
and my glasses (I'm a -9.0, kinda need them)

I would try to save my virginity.
Oh wait.. too late.

If things doesnt include me, my girlfriend and pet then.

1) My importnant file folder (which has my important stuff like passport, ss card, credit cards, birth certificate)
2) Imac
3) Wallet
4) Car Keys
5) LCD TV - which can be easily unhooked and carried if there's still time

on the practical side--my passport, wallet, and cellphone (not exciting but it would make life a little easier if I still had them). and on the personal side--my teddy bear (I've had him since I was born and there is no way I am letting him die in a fire).

everything else is basically replaceable (and insured). or, it would be practically impossible to get out of the apartment quickly in an emergency (prints and paintings and things).

I'd save any available greco-roman wrestlers.

like most people just the other family members and hopefully the animals- definately the people first!

My cat would save me by pawing or yelling at me and I would in turn make sure she was out the door with me.
I live in a highrize building.
Also my wallet and car keys if I could get to them. It's a good idea to make sure they are always in the same place so you know where they are.

1) my cats
2) my mother's suicide note and copies of the photos i buried her with and/or the trunk full of her stuff
3) my macbook
4) passport
5) purse

ultimately, though, my kittens come first.

@danken- love your response. i'll keep that in mind in case my place burns down.

If I could save five things...

1. My grandmother's rosary.
2. My mother's black pearls.
3. My puppy.
4. My watch (I have an odd attachment to it)
5. My cell phone (which has enough info to fix almost any problem)

Wow...I sound traditional there.

My jewelry, my grandmother's rolling pin, as many books as I could carry, my grandfather's high school diploma, and a stack of family photos to carry on top of the books.

MacBook Pro
Hard drives with 60,000 images saved
Cell phone
wallet
Photo box (if I can)

The rest is insured and can be replaced.

If I can put this in any perspective for pet owners - animals have their own reactions to danger. My two cats did ultimately survive the smoke, as the fire didn't reach my apartment, but they scattered and hid deep under the bed. I put my pants on, but my neighbor wasn't quite as alert. We both had jackets, I know I had shoes on, but the cats hid deep underneath the bed, as the room filled quickly with smoke. In the intervening years, upon hearing alarms, I am quick to grab the cat and stuff her in the carrier and take her (the other having since died of other causes), but the trivial nature with which this question is offered and received in various forums throughout my life is astounding... and ignorant. If you want to take your possessions with you in a fire, or even pets, you have to have time. It's been my experience that most people ignore fire alarms, at least to the point where they react fairly slowly and incredulously. They are usually drills or false alarms, but you're supposed to react like it's serious, and in my observation, people usually don't, unless they've been through it before.

When I had my fire, I was awake near 5 am with insomnia, and I heard a smoke detector and then a second one in the hall of my apartment building. I put on pants, I grabbed my coat and my cigarettes, and put on my boots while on the phone with an OPERATOR, not even 9-1-1, it was so casual, and within moments, my apartment was filled with black smoke and I was helping my neighbor and myself out the window and leave all of both our cats (4) behind.

Yet people still think they have about 5 or 10 minutes to put their hands on important things they wouldn't normally keep by the door or the bed or the window because the path to the door is on fire.

Related to this... how many of you have prepared emergency files such as recommended after Katrina should an evacuation be required? Basically birth certs, insurance policies, passports and a planned meet up location should such a thing happen.

Five things? No brainer: I have five cats.

When I was in school, my apartment building actually caught on fire. (I lived on the tenth floor.)

So I grabbed the most valuable thing I owned--my portfolio--and then headed over to grab my elderly neighbor.

Today, I'd grab my MAC, important docs, and my Cuban movie poster collection. And since my fiance is muscular 6' 2" and I'm not, he's on his own!

jeez, k t g, such a killjoy.

For the sake of the game, my cat (she can't fit under the bed and I have a small apartment and a carrier ready - ever try picking up a traumatized cat?), and my husband's ashes - although that seems pointless now that I think of it....I mean, they can't meet with much harm now can they....anyway, for the sake of reality....

K T G brings up a good point. I have a friend who was in a terrible fire. One of her cats jumped out a 3 story window (yes, survived) and I won't mention what happened to the others. There was NO time, just seconds. Devastating.

Maybe we could meet in the middle: Have emergency kits by the bed (I do, I live in earthquake country), put on some shoes, pick up the bag/kit and get the hell out of there.

OK, perhaps a leftover wrestler and a pint of Rum Raisin for the road.....oh wait, there's that pair of heels and that red silk blouse.....nay, just me and the traumatized cat.

For the sake of hypothetical questions being fun:

1: portfolio with our important documents (birth certs, marriage license, insurance documents, copies of diplomas, passports, and documents with sentimental value)
2: My bible and my grandmother's bible
3: the small box with all of our pictures in it (save the framed ones around the apt
4:computer
5:purse (containing wallet, cell phone, keys, etc.)

Get your facts right! Before judging him you should also write about how he lost the semifinals. The protest was against the corrupt judges in FILA and not because he was mad about "just" winning bronze. But most American media - didn't choose to cover this very important part about the story.

I guess it sounds more scandalous if you don't tell the story behind his protest. (which most american media is all about).

Hypothetical games involving saving material goods from a disaster aren't fun for me. This is a typical and stupid question. Why not just ask what are the five most important things you have? Why trivialize disasters? Why trivialize disasters as a jumping-off point to an Olympic protest about his medal? It's a non sequitur, and shallow and insensitive, and as aforementioned, unrealistic. I don't care if you think that's a killjoy, my reality is obviously different from yours but I think you're being ignorant by choice. I didn't lose most of my possessions in the fire, which is "lucky" I guess. I had to pack and move from a condemned building in cold March with no lights, without the luxury of sorting what to bring and what to leave behind, but looking back on it, most of what was saved was a different kind of burden. Items that were lost were stolen by looters.

I'm sorry if my traumatic experience is a laugh-riot to the rest of you.

boo.

Tara Parker Pope wrote an excellent piece in the NY Times a couple of weeks ago about a book called "The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster strikes, and Why." The book describes how one of the main ways that denial manifests is the tendency to "stick around and gather things" rather than get out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/health/05well.html?ref=health

Irene Nemirovsky illustrated this point beautifully in her book Suite Francaise, in her description of families attempting to flee Paris before the Germans arrived, only to get bogged down by trying to pack the heirloom linens they couldn't bear to leave behind.

I regularly email my writing projects off my laptop, and keep photocopies of handwritten journal entries & notes offsite, precisely so I'm not tempted to pause to grab the computer & notebooks in the event that there's no time.

So, this is an interesting conversation starter that inadvertantly promotes a maladaptive coping strategy.
To KTG and others who've been through fires: sorry you had to go through something so frightening and stressful. You brought up a good point, even though it's not fun to think about.

Thanks for posting the link, KarenH. I did assume the same response in my experience, because smoke detectors often go off for no urgent reason. Two smoke detectors, rarely, and this is when I began to take the situation seriously, but at the time, not even very urgently. I had enough time to put on some pants a coat and shoes while on hold with the operator, and take cigarettes. That's because all this stuff was by my bed and not neatly put away. In the real panic moment, I tried to get my cats and threw a wet towel toward the door to my apartment. It was way too smoky to approach the door with the towel and lay it down neatly at that point, and the cats were too far to reach and take with me by force.

The fire department was already at the front of the building when I called, but none of them knew about the separation between that building and the rear, different connected building, and we were saved by a parking lot attendant.

I understand the idea is to save something, the reason we saved it in the first place, from the trash or thrift store or our siblings when a relative dies. Without things, you feel lineage is lost or other personal treasures, or you won't have a souvenir from your home. You're just as apt to take something practical like shoes or a coat, as you are to take something impersonal and replaceable, like the book you were reading, or something you keep by the door, like a key bowl or a small plant, just to have something in your hand when you get outside.

The real idea is that time is too short there. You slow down for the sake of things and then must speed up, or you can go fast from the beginning. If you think you want to save your hypothetical Olympic bronze medal, just to (in some very shallow way) make a point about an athlete being ungrateful, you better sleep with it around your neck and wear it all day too.

If someone from an invading army was taking you away and gave everyone in your family 20 minutes to save 5 things, would you make your kids take fewer than 5 so you could have some of their slots? Would you take time to debate with your spouse whether his or her items were important enough to take? What kind of evil question would that be, for a change?

Related to the posted article, the longer forewarning you have, the less rational people tend to be, i.e., they think they have time to pack a suitcase. At least in Hurricane Katrina, I think the flooding was a surprise effect. The victims came through the storm ok, only to have the trauma of having some false security that they could stay in their homes or have enough time to save a lot of their things before the water came up. Some of the work that I do, albeit administratively, is in psychological disaster response training. Things really happen to people, and it's kind of nice that y'all care about plastic bags and toxic chemicals in the bleach, but it would be nice if you were aware of perpetuating insensitive memes.

I would also add, most of your social and familial supports will be more substantial than mine was, and makes a big difference, bigger than having stuff.

My handbag which contains wallet, passport,driving licence cards etc, car keys and husband. Thanks for asking it has made me think about.

Well, assuming I had time to to gather anything...

1) My cell phone
2) my MacBook Pro (or at the least the 2 hard drives I use to back up my computers)
3) The as many of the the books of music I've written I could get to
4) Wallet & Passport
5) Probably one of my guitars

However, if I had this much time to get all of this stuff, I could probably get a lot more as well.

I have file boxes with important papers but I wouldn't think of grabbing them if I'm forced to flee. They're too big. But now that I'm thinking about this I might have to put the true essentials in one place. Grab it and go.

1. my dog

2. the quilts my grandmas and mom have made me

3. my portfolio

4. my phone (but it is always in my pocket, do it doenst really count)

5. and my box of photos and negatives i have taken over the years.

I would probably just instinctively grab my purse which has my passport, drivers license, credit cards and phone already in it. I really doubt that I would be running around my apartment gathering anything else. Even some really important material things like childhood photos, heirlooms, nice watches, computers – these are all just things. It would be sad to lose them but so long as I got out of there with my life, that is what counts.

On a bigger scale, my family has a single meeting place (and a back-up one) if true nationwide disaster strikes and we have to meet up and telecommunications are down. We would all know where to go - no questions. We are pretty scattered around the country so some of us would take longer to get there!
It seems extreme but it is just something that has been passed along for a couple generations and seems to make sense. Anyone else have something like this in place?

i would save my dog & screw everything and anything else. the fact that some of the posters mentioned that a pet wasn't important enough kind of shocks me- my dog isn't like my child- she IS my child. and i'll be damned if i'd leave without her to let her perish in a fire. take that.

first of all- get a fire safe for back up hard drives and passports and other important papers; second, after 9/11 my family agreed to meet at my parents' cabin if need be...

k t g, i'm sorry i sounded insensitive. i understand very well the realities of a fire. i am the daughter of a firefighter, and you'd better believe we were drilled as a family on fire-safety. my mother and i also had to live with the reality that my dad's job consisted of him running INTO fires while everyone else ran out.

actually, once we thought the house WAS on fire. i threw on a bra, grabbed my coat, my dog, and ran out the house. (turns out some debris from a roof-job had gotten lodged in the pilot-light area, exploded, shook the house, and filled the basement with smoke.)

a housefire is just one thing i really hope i never have to deal with, because it's understandable how devastating it would be.

but this IS a hypothetical question, albeit one that's getting a lot of people thinking.

Thanks indiasoup. I didn't mean to spoil the thread, but I do think it's important for people to understand how quickly the situation can turn from false alarm to get the hell out NOW. Pondering where you left your grandmother's wedding dress can cost you your life, much less 4 other things you are sentimental about, or don't keep where you can grab it on your way out the window. I've never heard this question asked of people who survived fires or other disasters, what they were grabbing on the way out, and how glad they are that it wasn't lost.

belleyflop, in case you mean me who said or implied that pets weren't important enough - yes, yes they are. I was lucky my half of the building didn't ignite, and found 2 cats behind the gas stove of all places. They could have jumped out the open window, of all things. Some cats in the building were not so lucky. I had asked the firefighters about my cats and they would not volunteer that information to me, as not knowing which apartment I vacated.

All I was saying is that once I realized my building was on fire, I didn't have enough time to save myself if I was going to try to wrangle the cats. They had already gone with their goofy cat-plan to hide under the bed. In situations following that, when I hear an alarm, the cat has no choices, she is going forcefully with me, as hard as I can grab her to me, and put her in the carrier only if I think there's time. So far, no other incidents have turned out as catastrophic; most alarms do turn out to be nothing, but that's not the most immediate thought one should have. I would not choke to death on smoke trying to reach my cat. Animals have their own reactions to danger, and it poses added difficulty if you intend to save them - if your reaction to danger is slow and casual, as this question supposes. If you have very fast reflexes about it, and a plan, you can probably save your animals.

Well let me preface this with the fact that I have lived through a house fire. Now that said I am happy to say that the entire house didn't burn down just the addition where the fire occured. That was thanks to living less then a mile from the fire station and everyone being pretty quick about calling the fire department and shutting off the addition.

Now at that time I was living at home and had a cat. Those that said the pet runs and hides are 100% correct. My cat made it up under the bed hiding before I even knew what was going on. I ran upstairs and pulled her out. As the pet carrier was in the basement I took a large duffle bag and in went the cat.

That said I didn't have any other time after doing that so I my elderly grandfather and I got out of the house and he and the cat were safely put into one of our cars.

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=6325577

this is a news story about an apartment building that burned down in my area last week. the fire broke out just before 5:00 pm; while most people are still at work. it just goes to show that if a fire breaks out in your home or in your apartment you might not even be there to think about what 5 things to bring. if you have anything that you don't want to get destroyed by fire put it in a fire safe box. but, as many people have already said: it's all just stuff. the important thing is that you survived.

1) My dog
2) My cats (3)
3) Lockbox with important documents (birth cert, ss cards, etc)

This is assuming of course my boyfriend got out on his own accord. I think his "things to save" would involve his computer or hard drive, his car (since it's garage stored)...not sure what else.

Don't count on being there or being able to save anything. Therefore:

1) Buy a firesafe (they are less than $50) and store the important documents you don't carry around with you (like birth certificate and passport) in there.

2) Have a total, daily, offsite backup plan for your digital files.

3) Buy renter's insurance.

hja, very very good advice. i keep looking back here to see what tips pop up! my whole career is on my mac and discs. scary to think what would happen if it burns up.