More than 35 families may have lost their treasured photographs and other important documents in the aftermath of the San Bruno, CA natural gas pipeline explosion and fire last week.
How could you even imagine an entire neighborhood suddenly going up in flames? The residents of Detroit, MI don't need much imagination more than 85 homes, most of them unoccupied, burned during a wind-driven fire earlier last week. Tens of thousand lost electricity as the firefighters struggled to get the fire under control.
These two events remind us that in today's world things happen suddenly. It's easy to procrastinate and put off the tasks to prepare for an emergency. Getting around to it tomorrow or next week or next month is okay for certain things. You can lose the use of your home or office for a few weeks or months and you can survive. Your insurance company can pay your hotel bill and provide funds for new clothes and furniture, but how does your insurance company make you whole when your child's baby pictures or your wedding photos are consumed by a raging fire?
Our Heritage Vault offers some gentle advice about starting to digitize and store the important things in your life outside of your home. Take the first step by identifying the things that are most important to you. Our Important Things Index can help. Prioritize those things that matter to you and start scanning them or engage a reputable firm to do it for you.
Most important, back up and store your electronic files outside of your home. Use a portable hard drive or thumb drive to store your photos and keep it a safe deposit box or store the digitized material online in the Internet cloud.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
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