By Kate Ashford | NerdWallet
Floods, fires, historic storms — severe weather events are on the rise. If your home was hit by high water or a wildfire, would your important papers be safe?
“Unfortunately, I’ve had clients who’ve been victims of fires, flooding, hurricanes,” says Sev Tamayo, an agent with Goosehead Insurance in Palm Coast, Florida. “Some of them were prepared and some of them weren’t.”
Don’t be unprepared. Here’s what you need to do to protect your important documents.
The most important items to keep in a safe place are things that are difficult to replicate, which includes documents that prove identity, legal process or ownership. If you’d have to call a government agency to process a replacement, you probably want to store it somewhere where it can stay damage-free. You should also consider what you’d need to access if a disaster strikes.
Here are some items to consider, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency:
(For a complete checklist, visit ready.gov.)
“It’s also a good idea to keep scans of your critical documents, as well as backups of all your computer files on a storage device at a separate location, or in the cloud,” said Pete Duncanson, senior director of training and development at ServiceMaster Restore, a restoration service company, in an email.
In some cases, a copy of a document will suffice in an emergency. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep the original — but if you lose the original, you may be able to get by with your digital copy.
You can take a photo, scan a document or create a PDF of an online statement, and use a cloud service like Google Drive or Dropbox for storage. If you use an external drive, keep that somewhere safe as well.
If you need to file an insurance claim, your insurer will need proof of what you owned. Keeping a record of your things is tedious — but you probably have a smartphone with a camera.
“Start from the front door, turn on the video camera, take a quick two-minute walk around your house,” Tamayo says. “Save it on the cloud.”
Do this once a year. Let your insurance renewal be your cue, or set a calendar reminder — and refresh it when you’ve made a major purchase or renovation. “You want to get credit for the newest things that you have,” Tamayo says.
Store important documents in a container that makes the most sense for your particular risks with an eye toward preparing for the unexpected. Here are some options:
This article was written by NerdWallet and was originally published by The Associated Press.
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The article Would Your Documents Survive a Disaster? What to Protect and How originally appeared on NerdWallet.
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