Here are some things that survivors wish they had done BEFORE the disaster.

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72 Hour Kit

In major disasters, help might not be able to reach you for 3-7 days.  Katrina pretty much drove that point home.  Here is where a disaster kit comes in handy.  It can be as simple as an Ark III or Super Ark (or Ark III if it's not available at Amazon), or you can build your own with the help of companies like Urban Survival Tools, American Family Safety and Equipped to Survive. You can also check out FEMA's website for lists of what to put in your kit if you want to build one from scratch. I found an interesting list on a private blog where they were talking about survival

One thing about a kit, is that it's useless if it's at home and you're at work so you should think about having one home and at work (or school) and in the car.

Having your important papers in one spot (which can be stored in the same location as your 72 hour kit) can make a big difference if you have to evacuate on short notice. Try a kit like Securita's Porta Vault  to help you get organized!

Here are "21st-century disaster prep tips you won’t get from officials"

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Safe Deposit Box

After the 2003 fire, anyone who had a fire safe in their home were disappointed to find ash at the bottom.  They are just not rated for a long, hot fire like that (and they obviously don't help much in a flood, hurricane or tornado either).  Having a safe place (preferably in a different town) like a safe deposit box, would be preferable to storing it at home or at your neighbors house.  In case of a disaster, your neighbors house will be just as likely to be destroyed as your own.  I know some people who mail their out-of-state relatives stuff to store in a box for them.  This is especially helpful in wide scale disasters like the flooding in New Orleans where safe deposit boxes were flooded as well.

Things that should be your box are:

1. Any communication you get from your insurance company including your policy... and don't throw the old stuff out.
2. Video tape of your house (see below). 
3. Any other valuables or papers that would be hard to replace
4. Computer backup

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Safe Deposit Box Alternative

If you want to store more than a safe deposit box will hold, you can go with a storage service like Archive Management Services who does home delivery and pickup.

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Video of house

Many booklets and handouts about disaster preparedness suggest to have a complete and updated inventory of your house.  I believe that is completely impractical.  Even if you do it once, it is just about immediately incorrect and you just spent days of your life creating it.  For most of us, just having a video tape of each room would've really helped and it doesn't take long to make.  Since the fire I've just been updating it once a year when my insurance renewal comes in the mail. Don't forget to store the video or pictures on one of the online sites listed below!

You could also pay someone to do an inventory of your house. There are many services available to do this, just search for "home inventory service".

No matter how you do your inventory, remember as soon as you're done, the inventory is wrong, so don't simply rely on your prepared inventory... you still have a ton of work to do... it will just be a lot easier.

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Insurance

Any insurance is better than nothing.  Make sure you get coverage for known disasters in your area (like earthquake and/or flood insurance).  If you "can't get insurance" try calling several brokers.  There are very few people who are completely uninsurable, and there are state run programs (like the California FAIR Plan) for those people.

As for "good insurance" the only thing we can recommend is to get "guaranteed replacement" which promises to replace your house no matter what the limits are on the policy.  The only insurer we know of who offers this kind of insurance in our area is AAA of Southern California.  We seemed to notice that people who had AAA had their houses up much faster than almost everyone else. In their May 2006 magazine, AAA said that all of the claimants who had total losses from the October 2003 fires were back in their house or settled by the beginning of 2005. By contrast, all of the other major insurance players are still litigating claims to this day.

That being said, not everyone can get guaranteed replacement and even those companies who do offer this product will try to save themselves some money when it comes time to file a claim (yes... save money by not giving it to you). Call your insurance company ASAP and ask them if you have enough insurance in case your house burns to the ground. When they say yes, ask again. If they say no, ask them what needs to be done to get it insured properly and then do it. If the premium is too high, ask for a higher deductible to lower the premium. Some even give discounts if you insure both house and cars with them. When you're done, thank them for their time and then write a letter thanking them for reviewing the policy and insuring you were insured properly. Keep a copy of the letter in your safe deposit box or online with other important documents (see below).

If you have a claim, take time to get educated (organizations like CARe or Policyholders of America do a great job at this). Do not take the insurance company's word for anything. Remember, they are there to save themselves money.

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(Optional) Photos and Important Documents

I can't tell you how many people we've met who have lost everything. Every picture, every paper... everything. It's hard to describe how devastating that is and now-a-days loosing photographs and important papers is completely optional... if you plan ahead.

Remember, you might not be home when it happens so even having a plan to grab the photos first might not always work.

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1. Decide today to start developing film with a company like Snapfish. I originally selected Snapfish in 2000 because they were one of the few companies who actually returned negatives with the prints (although maybe there are others now who still do that).
   
   Here's how it works, they send you mailers (they pay the postage), you drop your film in a bag and put it in the mail box, they develop them, put them online and return the developed photos and negatives to you. Once they show up online you can then edit, caption and do many other things with your photos.  Once you're satisfied you create many different things with your photos (mugs, t-shirts, memory books) with your photos. You can share the photos with anyone else with internet access. They can order prints, make things etc.
   
   If you have a digital camera, you can also upload your digital photos to their website and have them create prints for you or do anything else you could do with regular photos. If you're in a hurry, You can also forgo the whole mailing part and have them printed at a local photo counter (currently Wal-Greens and Albertsons).
   
   If you're ambitious and have scanned all of your old photos (or had them scanned by a service) you can upload them just like a digital photo.
   
   And here's the best part. Once you have them stored there... they never "expire". They are stored there for good. Your house could evaporate and you could just have your insurance company pay for all new photo albums and pay to have Snapfish reprint them all. Hmmm... I wonder if you could get the insurance company to pay someone to scrapbook for you. (Maybe so if you had spent a lot of time and effort putting together a professional looking page! If you've gone that far, maybe you could take a picture of each finished page of your scrapbook and store that online too.)
   
   We've talked a lot about photos, but what about those other documents you'd like to save (insurance papers, birth certificates)? If you have a scanner, then you can scan the documents to JPG files and post them on your Snapfish account.
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2. A service like Snapfish is great for existing JPG files, but what about all of the years of photos you have laying around? If you don't have time to scan them all yourself, this is where Scan Cafe or DigMyPics has you covered. You send them your photos and they send you back a CD or DVD (or other services as outlined on their website).
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3. So what about movies? HomeMovie.com This website does have a monthly service fee (the fee depends on how much video you store with them) but they will digitize video tapes for only $5 each. You can optionally have them put on DVD's and sent to you.
   
   Once they're on their servers they have all sorts of things you can do. You can edit them and create movies, share them, put them on your video iPod. I'm sure they will think of many new and cool things you can do in the future.
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4. Do you have other types of documents you'd like to save that can't be turned into JPG files? Many of the main stream file storing services have gone away (think Yahoo Briefcase and AOL's Xdrive) but here's a list of services that are still out there. You can also use a service like Dropbox which allows you to synch up to 2gb of information between two computers.
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5. Computer Backup. You should always backup your computer. Buy an external hard drive and download the free program Cobian Backup. Of course that does not mean that it will be safe in case of a natural disaster unless you were home and remembered to grab the external drive on the way out the door. To be 100% safe you would need to use an online backup service.
   
   For the first time online backup is finally affordable. Previously you'd use a service like IBackup.com which cost almost $100 a month for only 100GB. But now there are services such as Carbonite which I'm using. See their website for current details, but from what I remember it was about $50 a year and you can get free months for referring people.

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Other Preparedness Resources

The Preparedness Report

California's first lady discusses disaster preparedness

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Last Updated: January 7, 2010