Document everything of value now
Following a major natural disaster, insurance companies often require claimants to fill out an itemized list of possessions lost or damaged in the event.
Remembering and tallying every piece of furniture, every article of clothing, and every item in every drawer is nearly impossible. And that’s only step one.
Days after Michael’s home was reduced to ash, his insurance company requested such a list, along with dollar values for everything they had lost. Michael described it as a painful, dehumanizing, trauma-triggering combination of deep loss and hopeless bureaucracy. In hindsight, Michael says he wishes he had documented their home in detail long before the fire, sparing themselves the soul-sapping hours spent itemizing everything that made their house a home.
Because my home survived the fire, I was able to gain access in the aftermath and take photos, room by room, revealing the contents of drawers, closets, and cupboards. It was this level of detail that convinced our insurance adjuster to release funds to replace many — but not all — of the items the fire had damaged.
Charred remnants and semi-recognizable ceramic shards Michael pulled from the rubble on an early visit to the remains of his house. Michael Cohen/NYT Wirecutter
Do this first: Mark a day every year to photograph and video-document everything of value. Start with a literal walkthrough of the rooms, noting what things are and what they cost. The first time requires the most effort; every subsequent year the task will become easier. Refresh your documentation folder with newly added possessions. A spreadsheet detailing specific brands, models, sizes, receipts, and purchase dates on damaged items proved essential to receiving full or near value from my insurer.
Know your policy before you need it
I dedicated a considerable amount of attention toward installing physical measures to protect my home against fire, but I wish I had also proactively learned how my home insurance policy covers fire damage. I wasn’t able to get our complete policy from my insurer to review for several weeks after the fire, leaving my wife and I unsure what we could claim.
Do this first: Write your insurer a short letter or email asking for the full, certified copy of your policy — everything from the main declarations page to the tiny add-on endorsements and any recent changes. Include your policy number in your request and mention why you need it. That way you’ll have the complete document set you’re entitled to and a clear paper trail in case you need to request it again. Keep both a hard copy and a digital copy.
Build your community network
Accurate information can be scarce as communities evacuate, but trustworthy neighbors can be a crucial resource for information specific to your street and property.
“In the hours leading up to the fires, our neighbors and local friends were texting frantically about evacuation plans, power outages, and fireproofing,” says Michael. “Between social media misinformation and general alarmism, it was hard to understand what was happening on the ground.”
Cordoned off from our neighborhood, my wife and I were initially left in the dark as to whether our home had burned or survived. Evacuation orders were inconsistent in the Eaton Fire, and some neighbors never left. We learned that our home remained intact via FaceTime, while our neighbors up the street continued to share hour-by-hour updates of the fire’s path and progress. The specificity of information on our exact street was crucial, but understandably, it was not something you could find in local news reports.
Do this first: Coordinate with your neighbors to establish a text chain or a group chat on an app such as WhatsApp or GroupMe. In doing so, you can help one another spot local emergencies or stay in the know even if you’ve left the area. Michael’s group thread began as a bunch of neighborhood dog-walkers before the fire; afterward, when it would have been difficult to even contact one another, it served as an invaluable communal support system to start recovering from a disaster that affected them all.
You could also join a volunteer organization to help your community prepare for a disaster. In the Eaton aftermath, I’ve worked with a fire-safe council locally to do community brush clearance. The fire galvanized many others, too; we know it won’t be the last one.
Create an evacuation strategy
Know when to leave, where to go, and how to get there.
Local officials are unlikely to come to escort you from your home or guide your evacuation — you might not even get an evacuation notice at all. The high winds and other disruptive conditions that accompany most disasters often cause power outages, so you might find yourself suddenly without lights, without internet, and on a severely compromised cellular service just as things get serious. You’ll need to navigate under serious stress, and having an evacuation plan ahead of an emergency is crucial to helping you leave calmly and safely.
The view to the ravine outside Gregory Han’s rear windows, where firefighters cleared brush and set up a watch station during the Eaton Fire. Only one road can access this area. Amanda Hakan for NYT Wirecutter
My wife and I live in a hillside neighborhood with one lone paved road going in and out. But with some research, I found an additional unpaved fire road and two other trails that could provide us with additional routes of escape if our main road was compromised. In the end, it didn’t matter: All the fireproofing had left me hyper-attuned to fire conditions in the forecast, so when I saw the historic winds expected for January 7, we preemptively evacuated to a pet-friendly hotel in a more central part of Los Angeles.
Finding accommodations during an evacuation, especially with children or pets, can be challenging if not impossible due to the sudden increased demand. Michael’s friends were taken in by family and friends for the most part. Within a day of the fires, our hotel was filled with residents affected by two concurrent urban wildfires.
Do this first: Establish a primary evacuation route and backup routes in the event of road closures. Keep a paper map and written directions detailing your possible paths to safety in case of the loss of cell signal. Download local emergency notification apps such as Watch Duty, Disaster Alert, and the FEMA app to keep abreast of developments so you know when to leave.
Pack your go bag
After a major disaster, chances are high that you will be staying in temporary housing. Although it’s important to have a go bag ready, it’s also helpful to pack a bag with creature comforts that might help you feel at home. It might be a very long time before you can return home.
Avoid panic-packing. A friend remorsefully shared that she had grabbed “anything and whatever I could find” in the heat of evacuating while smoke and fire enveloped her street; only afterward did she realize that she lacked practical clothing suitable for months of displacement.
Once you’re displaced you may have to change addresses multiple times. Many Altadena evacuees shared that they had to move from hotels to motels to relatives’ and friends’ couches as days became weeks and then months. Ideally, you should have a roller suitcase packed with essentials — Michael shared that suitcases were some of the highest-demand items at recovery centers in the aftermath.
Do this first: Acquire durable, ergonomic luggage to use as a basic go bag. Pack clothes (swap with the seasons), cash, backup batteries and chargers, an extra pair of shoes, and copies of vital documents you’ll need for identification. Also pack extra medications and basic toiletries (regularly rotate them so you’re not left with expired supplies). You may also want an object that provides emotional or physical comfort that you can easily grab on your way out.
Digitize all your documents
The weeks following displacement require you to constantly prove who you are and where you lived to government agencies and aid groups providing everything from financial grants to food and clothing. Even if you have plans in place, it’s still possible to evacuate without every vital piece of personal, medical, and financial information in hand. Without these documents, you could hit numerous roadblocks on your road to recovery.
Despite presenting a physical passport and a state-issued driver’s license, I found myself in a two-month-long maze laid out by the Small Business Administration that required a scan of my physical Social Security card. Without one I would be ineligible for government assistance. Securing a replacement card took me more than a month, after which the SBA took another month to green-light my assistance. Had I had a digital backup of the card, I could have avoided the whole ordeal.
Do this first: Snap photos of important documents and back them up to an external hard drive and/or a secure cloud service. Protect sensitive files with two-factor authentication. Most important are identifying documents such as your passport, birth certificate, Social Security card, wedding certificate, and driver’s license. Some important things to prove your identity and address — such as mortgage and bank statements or bills — may be available online, so prioritize backing up things you can’t easily recover (like that Social Security card). Set an annual calendar reminder to refresh these documents as they expire or change.
Seal your home’s weak spots
Smoke damage is insidious because you often cannot see it, so taking some quick steps to prevent it from seeping in can make a world of difference in the recovery process. While I invested to protect my home by installing fire-grade vents and preparing landscaping with fire in mind, I was not aware how smoke would permeate into the home through smaller access points such as the kitchen, laundry room, and bathroom vents. I wish I had duct-taped — or maybe gaffer-taped — the sliding doors to prevent ash and soot debris from entering before I evacuated.
Do this first: Weather-seal your windows and doors to reduce the chances of soot, ash, and char entering your home. Inspect and replace any compressed, frayed, or missing weather stripping. Don’t forget a garage door threshold seal — my remediation testing revealed the highest lead contamination along the first 2 feet of the garage door. A fireplace flue blocker may also be useful, as embers and smoke can make their way down the chimney and inside the home during a wind-whipped firestorm.
The view of Gregory’s front entryway, early in the recovery, as teams assessed the extent of the contamination and determined what could be salvaged. Gregory Han/NYT WirecutterUnderstand your fire safe’s limitations
Wirecutter regularly supplements its extensive product testing with in-home, personal, real-world testing, and by almost unbelievable chance Michael had been assigned a fireproof-rated safe to test in his home.
“When we came back to what was left of our house, I searched for that safe in the rubble and ashes,” says Michael. “I couldn’t even remember what was in it — a receipt from our engagement ring, an old family photo, some foreign currency we’d brought back and meant to exchange — but I wanted to find it so badly just to have even a shred of proof we had lived here, our home had stood here. I never found the safe. I was looking for it as I remembered it, a sort of bulky, bulletproof suitcase. But as I learned later, it had most likely melted.”
Michael learned the hard way that fireproof safes are rated to withstand a certain temperature only for a finite amount of time. They perform best in house fires where the fire department can respond quickly and douse the flame. In a wildfire hot enough to melt cars, it’s too hot for almost any fireproof safe to keep up.
Do this first: To give your fireproof safe the best chance of withstanding a fire, situate it behind a closed door — such as in a closet — on the highest floor of your home. The closet may give it some extra protection from both heat and smoke, and in the case that your home burns completely, locating it on the top floor of your house means that it may be buried under less debris than if it were on a lower floor.