It was 2:00AM when Rob sat bolt upright in bed. “I hear sirens” he said, and he got up and hustled down the hallway. Seconds later he came tearing back into the room. “The condos are on fire, I’m going to take photos. I’ll be careful!” and with that, he was packing up the camera and heading out the door before I could even piece together what was happening.
As I looked out the window, I saw flames leaping over the roofs of the houses across the street. The fire was massive, and I was immobilized. I had never seen anything like it, and it was terrifying. Sparks filled the air along with billowing clouds of smoke, and I could hear the roar from blocks away. Then BOOM! The entire house shuddered. A propane tank had exploded. This was serious.
Thankfully, despite the size of the fire, no one was hurt. It was a condo complex that was still under construction, and the flames didn’t spread. But in that moment, when you aren’t sure what is going to happen, you ask yourself: “If I have to leave my house, what am I going to take with me?”
My answer came quickly and easily: Max (our baby) and my camera. That was it, I didn’t have to take anything else. It wasn’t that I didn’t think about all our photos that we’ve created over the years. But I knew that every single one was either safely backed up on a hard drive stored in a vault at our bank, or on the memory card in my camera. Even if the house burnt down, and took out all of our computers and hard drives, our photos and business files would be fine.
The key here was that we had figured all this stuff out long ago. We weren’t scrambling in the middle of a crisis to sort things out.
So take a second right now, and think: If you are faced with a leave-your-house situation, do you know if your photos will be safe? What do you need to bring with you to make sure you won’t lose anything? Do you have all your images stored in an offsite location? Plan that stuff now, when you can take the time to sort it all out. We hope you’ll never ever ever face that kind of situation, but if you do, you can ensure that you won’t lose any of your precious photos.
Need some help sorting out your backup plan? Check out our eBook, Backup or Die. It’s easy to follow, and will guide you through everything! Plus there are dragons!
