This week on Pinterest I found a nifty blog post about creating an emergency documentation packet/binder. There was a good description and printable sheets to help you get everything set:
Your Own Home Store: Emergency Documents
Creating an emergency documentation packet is something that I mean to do myself. As we head into hurricane season for 2012, I’ve been thinking about natural disasters and how best to prepare for them. While there are certain skills and supplies that make weathering a storm and it’s aftermath better, a packet like this with INFORMATION can be invaluable. If you need to contact the insurance company because of storm damage you don’t want to be hunting all over the house for the phone number and policy number. And God forbid that anyone in your household is missing after a storm-wouldn’t it make a search easier if you had their pertinent information and a recent photo available easily?
Putting together a packet like this doesn’t have to cost anything–so it’s not only useful, but frugal.
A few additional items I’d include that the blogger doesn’t mention:
-phone numbers for a tree removal service, a plumber, an electrician, a roofer and any other “repair” type service you might need immediately once a storm or disaster is past.
-basic evacuation information/numbers. If you HAD to evacuate your home, where would you most likely go? Do you know how to get there? Look up that town/area and have the phone numbers for several hotels–that way if you have to evacuate you can call IMMEDIATELY and book a room.
-for security you may want to use an “offset” number for any account or policy numbers you list. That is basically a “code” where you add a set number to everything. For example, if your insurance account number is 197328 and you use an offset of 2, you would add 2 to each number in the account-so it would become 319540 when you wrote it down. To get your “real” number you’d just subtract 2. You can even mark the offset down somewhere in the front of the packet so you don’t forget. Most people wouldn’t know what it meant 
Do any of you have an emergency documentation packet? What information do you include?
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