Fire Safety
A pal of mine at work just lost her home to a fire last week. She and her husband are fine, and all of the pets made it out. The frame of the house is intact, but it will take months for them to get back into their home.
She has been e-mailing us daily updates as they go through all of this. It is incredibly kind of her to share her story, and this has gotten me thinking. I just wanted to share some thoughts.
First, her batteries were dead in the fire detectors. They has a friend staying the night, and if the smoke hadn’t triggered an asthma attack they might not have woken up to get out.
I cannot remember the last time we checked ours, but you better believe we made sure they are all working now.
Second, it has made me realize I have no way to prove I own what I own. Right now she is having to itemize everything, down to the deodorant. And it is is all frozen in place. IT has been in the teens and twenties outside here all week, and all the water from the firefighters froze everything in place…that paints such an eerie picture of having to chip off all your worldly possessions to make a list.
So this weekend I am planning on going around the house and using the digital camera to snap shots of each room, closets and all. The plan is to copy all of these onto a CD and put a copy in our safety deposit box.
Any other ideas?
February 9th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
How awful….but wonderful that everyone (including pets) are alright.
I can’t imagine anything better than the camera plan. I guess you could add an audio dictation for details like the age/value of items. Ugh.
Your new site looks fantastic..I’m looking forward to its debut!
February 10th, 2007 at 5:18 am
There are a couple of freeware home inventory programs available. One’s called Possessions Matter 3 from State Farm (http://www.statefarm.com/learning/loss_prevent/learning_loss_homeinventory1.asp)
and HomeInventory from the Insurance Information Institute (http://www.knowyourstuff.org/). I’m sure there are more but these were written about by AAA a few years ago, I think. Also, my grandfather was an insurance agent and he always wanted pictures. I think his point was that if he’s got copies of your pics, then they won’t get destroyed in a home fire! If you have a place to post them online, that would work too!
February 11th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Thank for reminding me I need to do the same. A friend of ours lost their home and the biggest problem they had was being reimbursed for clothes. The insurance company went as far as asking them to get pictures of the clothes. Well, most pictures burned obviously. They then asked for snapshots taken by friends to prove they had clothes claimed lost in the fire. So take photos of your clothes too!
February 13th, 2007 at 10:48 am
We did something like this when we lived in SC prior to a hurricane. But we used a video camera - that way you can add the audio commentary, and you can take sweeping shots of the room - might be a little faster. If your video camera is digital - then you are even better off!
February 17th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
You could also do the camera thing and upload the pictures to a free web-based photo storage service (Kodack, yahoo, snapfish, shutterfly - to name a few). you’d just need to ask your insurance agent to use their lap top and show them all the pictures. That way you wouldn’t have to worry about finding a key to unlock your safe deposit box.
i’m also glad to hear everyone got out safely.