In the event of an emergency...

At my apartment, we apparantly have a short circuit. One corner of our kitchen keeps losing power. We've thrown the circuit breaker a few times, which helps, but it just goes out again. *sigh* the joys of apartment life. At any rate, it started us thinking about fire hazards, and what to do in the event of an emergency.

One of the things we did was to ponder what we would take out of our house if it were on fire. I said to my roommates, "Decide on 5 things you would carry out. You have to be able to carry all 5 at once, cuz you only get one trip."

We decided that purses didn't count, they're attached, but if you have to add anything to the purse, those things count against the 5. We also determined that the 5 things have to be easily accessible--whether before or after we had the conversation they became so.

Here are the 5 things that I would carry out of my house if it were on fire.

1. My laptop.
2. My journals.
3. My scrapbook.
4. My scriptures.
5. My Dan certificate


Here's my thinking. 1. My laptop. All of my everythings are on my laptop. My novels. All my digital pictures that have never been printed. All my school work from college. Everything. Yes, I should back everything up, but I haven't. Besides, there's just a lot! If I lost my laptop, I think my world might come to an end. Just saying. 2. My journals are irreplacable. I have three of them at my apartment, and they cover the last 8 years of my life. They would be a devastating loss--I would feel like I had lost those years, because the record would be gone. 3. My scrapbook is not necessarily irreplacable; as long as I had my laptop, I would have all the pictures. But I've put an awful lot of work into my scrapbook and the memories within. So I'd take it too. 4. I would feel pretty sacrilegious if I didn't take my scriptures out of a burning building. So I would take them. =) and 5. The certificate from the Kukkiwon (international DUDES of taekwondo) that says I'm officially a black belt--and it costs a fortune and many many months to get replaced. So since I couldn't think of anything else I would save, I'd save this.

This is the thing--a fire would be, in any case, a devastating event. The loss of all my earthly belongings is not a pleasant thought. I would be so sad to lose all my books, all my furniture, my books, my piano, all those books, my clothing, my books, all my papers and documents and records, my books... But the point of this exercise was to identify those things that are most irreplacable and precious, so that if we had mere seconds to grab a few things, we would know immediately which things were most important. It saves time and perhaps a fair bit of panic in the moment.

The only downside--a fire is at least as likely to occur when none of us are home, and we're unable to save anything at all. *sigh*

What five things would you save in event of an emergency?