Discussions

This is such a great thread! Really enjoying reading everyone’s stories. I first started thinking about being more prepared in 2018, after gas workers replacing a line in Lawrence, MA, about 30 miles from wherever I live, over-pressurized the line by mistake and caused upwards of 80 fires at once. People’s homes literally exploded. It was totally crazy and shocking. Much of the surrounding area was evacuated and power was shut off for days; my then-boss’s brother lived in the area and was one of the folks evacuated. I remember seeing stories on the news of people who fled their homes without their wallets, glasses, prescription medicines, etc. — firefighters had to go in to retrieve these basics for them while it was still quite dangerous to be inside. I realized two things: 1) I didn’t want to be one of those folks who put others in harm’s way if I could help it, and 2) unless we did something to prepare, there was no way my husband and I were getting our pets out of the house in a situation like that! At the time, we had 2 cats and one bulky old pet crate, which was almost impossible to get out of the closet (and even if I did, they fought like hell not to go in it). I started with a small, poorly equipped emergency bag and a pair of more reasonable pet carriers. After the pandemic started, I realized I needed to think more broadly about preparedness and luckily found this site.

I keep photocopies of my passport, driver’s license, birth certificate, marriage certificate, the titles to my house and car (you won’t have the car title if you’re still making payments, so I guess you’d want the documentation of the finance arrangement instead), medical info, and insurance docs in the BOB. For our 2 cats, I include copies of their adoption, microchip, and most recent rabies vaccination certificates. I don’t keep credit card info in the BOB at all, but do have cash. I also recently added a list of emergency phone numbers, including insurance and utilities, along with the policy/account numbers for each. (I realized how important those are when we had a big storm and my power company’s website went down during the outage.) I have scans of most of this saved securely electronically as well. The idea is to have copies of all the key stuff I’d need if I had to run out of the house with literally nothing but the bag and the pets. When not in use (which is usually), I keep the originals, other than the cards that live in my wallet, in a fireproof document bag in our home filing cabinet so that I could grab them easily if needed. I don’t want to have to unpack the BOB to get to them if I need them in the normal course, but I also want them to be safe, secure, and all together so I’m not hunting around in an emergency. And I also keep a credit card I rarely use in the fireproof bag as a backup.  I think having an old passport in the BOB is fine (they do return them to you, but with a hole punched in them!) but you might want to include a photocopy of the current one, too, just in case you need to show that you have a current one. 

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This is such a great thread! Really enjoying reading everyone’s stories. I first started thinking about being more prepared in 2018, after gas workers replacing a line in Lawrence, MA, about 30 miles from wherever I live, over-pressurized the line by mistake and caused upwards of 80 fires at once. People’s homes literally exploded. It was totally crazy and shocking. Much of the surrounding area was evacuated and power was shut off for days; my then-boss’s brother lived in the area and was one of the folks evacuated. I remember seeing stories on the news of people who fled their homes without their wallets, glasses, prescription medicines, etc. — firefighters had to go in to retrieve these basics for them while it was still quite dangerous to be inside. I realized two things: 1) I didn’t want to be one of those folks who put others in harm’s way if I could help it, and 2) unless we did something to prepare, there was no way my husband and I were getting our pets out of the house in a situation like that! At the time, we had 2 cats and one bulky old pet crate, which was almost impossible to get out of the closet (and even if I did, they fought like hell not to go in it). I started with a small, poorly equipped emergency bag and a pair of more reasonable pet carriers. After the pandemic started, I realized I needed to think more broadly about preparedness and luckily found this site.

I keep photocopies of my passport, driver’s license, birth certificate, marriage certificate, the titles to my house and car (you won’t have the car title if you’re still making payments, so I guess you’d want the documentation of the finance arrangement instead), medical info, and insurance docs in the BOB. For our 2 cats, I include copies of their adoption, microchip, and most recent rabies vaccination certificates. I don’t keep credit card info in the BOB at all, but do have cash. I also recently added a list of emergency phone numbers, including insurance and utilities, along with the policy/account numbers for each. (I realized how important those are when we had a big storm and my power company’s website went down during the outage.) I have scans of most of this saved securely electronically as well. The idea is to have copies of all the key stuff I’d need if I had to run out of the house with literally nothing but the bag and the pets. When not in use (which is usually), I keep the originals, other than the cards that live in my wallet, in a fireproof document bag in our home filing cabinet so that I could grab them easily if needed. I don’t want to have to unpack the BOB to get to them if I need them in the normal course, but I also want them to be safe, secure, and all together so I’m not hunting around in an emergency. And I also keep a credit card I rarely use in the fireproof bag as a backup.  I think having an old passport in the BOB is fine (they do return them to you, but with a hole punched in them!) but you might want to include a photocopy of the current one, too, just in case you need to show that you have a current one.