We caught some video a few weeks ago of North Carolinians who had fled their homes and who had taken refuge at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, which was providing parking space for trailers and RVs, camping facilities, and food service to hurricane refugees. Some of the folks were interviewed about what they had brought with them.
One woman’s pickup truck contained a small chest freezer with all of her home’s frozen food, ready for hookup to an electrical supply. She also brought along a generator. A family of seven brought five dogs. One family brought some children’s drawings and a blanket with family handprints on it. Another family brought things it would use while away from home; the father had stayed at the house in a rural area to prevent looting.
Watching news coverage of various and recent natural disasters such as forest fires and hurricanes and floods, we started thinking about a group consensus exercise we have done from time to time.
If you had a few minutes or a few hours, to flee from your endangered home, what would you take? We are assuming your first priority is yourself and any other family members. But after that? Here’s a list of possibilities. Feel free to add others in the comment section below.
Computers
Wallet
Passport
Pets
Cell phone
Coin collection
Television(s)
Clothes
Children’s (Grandchildren’s ) Refrigerator drawings
Family archives
Financial records
Video games
Family heirlooms
Jewelry
Medicines or medical supplies
Wedding dress and/or album
Art collection (prints, posters, originals, etc.)
Favorite furniture
Mom’s recipes
Cameras
An additional vehicle or vehicles
Antiques
Baseball card collection
Food
Guns
Family Bible
Insurance policies
Sleeping bags
Tools
I’ve run consensus exercises with groups using a similar list. Admittedly the exercise assumes there is at least SOME time to grab things although many disasters such as house fires in the middle of the night require instant escape in whatever sleeping attire is being worn—or whatever clothing can be grabbed on the way out.
The answers show generational differences. Younger people are more likely to take the material things—the television set, the pets, the tools, the jewelry. Older folks are likely to make memories the priority—pictures, recordings, some family heirlooms. Younger folks grab things they can replace. Older folks grab things that cannot be replaced.
When I was a high school freshman, I dashed out the front door of my house one morning to get on the school bus. Six hours later a man met me in the principal’s office to tell me that my parents were okay but all we had left were the clothes we were wearing, the family car, and whatever was in my gym locker. A person never forgets what was lost in a disaster. A small nugget of fear deep inside never goes away. And sometimes people spend the rest of their lives trying to recover what was lost (which is why I have a complete set of Fran Striker’s Lone Ranger novels on the bookshelf five feet from where I am sitting).
Many people have their family photographs, documents, and all kinds of other things stored in the cloud, which might alter the disaster-grab priorities. But a lot of us haven’t gone there yet.
There are three places in our home where we keep family archives, one of them a basement cabinet filled with thousands and thousands of slides. I’ve made up my mind that if I had the time, those would be the first things to go in the minivan—after the second row seats had been removed, if possible—then the computer. What would you save, beyond yourself, if you had the time to save something? It’s worth thinking about.
Because we never know.