In planning for emergencies it is important that you take the time to safeguard your important family documents. These can include birth certificates, social security cards, car titles, wills, insurance information, the title to your home and your marriage certificate. You may also want to consider family pictures and journals when making this plan.
For the important documents that you keep in your home you should purchase a fireproof lock box to keep the papers in. This will give minimal protection in case of a fire or another emergency. These boxes are quite heavy, but usually rather small, so you may be able to move it to your car if you are evacuating.
Another safeguard you can complete is to scan the important documents and burn them to a CD. You can also burn copies of your pictures to a CD. You should then store these somewhere offsite from your home. One safe place is in a safety deposit box at your bank. Although the scanned documents may not hold up in a court of law, they will help you to find the information you need to replace the documents, which you have lost. You may want to keep another CD at home in a safe place. It is easier to grab a CD if you are in a real hurry.
You may also want to consider backing up your hard drive and other important information that you have on the computer. This will allow you to get back to normal as quickly as possible. One way to do this is with a portable hard drive. Another way is to burn copies onto CD or DVD.
For most of these documents it can be time-consuming and fairly expensive to replace them. If you can secure them so that you will not need to replace them it is worth the extra effort now. If you do make a CD of your scanned documents make sure that you store it in a safe place. The documents contain all the information needed in order for someone to steal your identity. You do not want to make this information easily accessible.