Natural disasters are unpredictable, and evacuation notices can sometimes come so quickly that it leaves us little time to prepare and to gather important documents that we’ll need in case of property loss. With the ongoing effects of the Canadian wildfires prompting air quality alerts in 13 states in the Northeast and Atlantic and the 2023 fire season kicking off in California, our goal is to help our clients prepare in advance for these unforeseen events.
At Wealthspire, our top priority is the safety and well-being of those impacted by these events. To help you prepare in advance for a potential emergency evacuation, here is a list of important documents to bring with you.
Important Documents
- Driver’s licenses or other personal identification
- Passports
- Deeds to real estate properties
- Proof of insurance (i.e., declarations pages from your homeowners’, earthquake, flood, umbrella, auto, and boat policies)
- Estate documents (i.e., trusts, wills, Powers of Attorney, Advance Health Care Directives)
- Medical records, including vaccination history for your family and pets
- Prescriptions for medications
- Social security cards
- Birth certificates
- Marriage certificate
- A list of personal contacts with their addresses and phone numbers
We recommend having as much of this information as possible in a safe, secure, and easy to reach place in the event you need to act quickly to ensure your safety. Ideally, you would scan them so you’d have electronic copies that you could bring with you on a flash drive or access from the Cloud. The Cal Fire Ready for Wildfire App can also assist in creating an evacuation plan and tracking documents. For our clients, we can include these on your portal for easy access anywhere you can access the Internet.
An online password manager is a great way to capture and save all of your logins in one place that you can access via the Internet. It’s also important to electronically store a video of your home and its contents (i.e., open the doors and drawers).
While we cannot predict when or how a natural disaster might impact our lives, we can prepare in advance to minimize the time it may take to recover in the event of property loss.
Your advisors are here to help – please let us know if you have any questions about the best approach to safeguarding your family’s most important information.
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