Today we're going to be talking about natural disasters and how to prepare for natural disaster whether you're a renter
Or a homeowner. It's important either way. So as we're seeing across the country
we're seeing more and more extreme weather patterns a great example of that right now and the reason i'm doing this video is because
California is on fire california's on fire. I literally just filmed this entire video it was long. It was like 20 minutes
And none of it filmed because I got a fire alert in the middle that the fire has grown
Yay, okay, so we're doing round two here so
What the heck do you need to do to prepare? Okay, so as I sit here right now, um my house
You know where I predominantly live is four miles away from the wall bridge fire. Yeah, google it google it
It's the thing of nightmares
It's a thing of nightmares
But i'm sitting here smiling because i'm used to it i'm used to it and i've done my homework. I turned in my homework
So I know that no matter what happens i'm going to be okay?
So right now we're going to talk about that homework that you want to work on if you are faced with a natural disaster situation
and this stuff is something you should do every year anyways, because you may think you're not in the natural disaster area right now, but
Arizona has fires colorado has fires. Um, my husband and I last night were like, where do we go if this does this again?
Um, and we're like, well, I like florida florida's beautiful
hurricanes, I mean it's it's new york's great flooding, you know, uh,
there was
New york had tornadoes this year, which was crazy
Like I got this alert in brooklyn that there were tornadoes I was like, how is this happening? Anyways weather's getting more extreme
So it's important to prepare and be ready to go
number one and the most important thing
Insurance. Oh my goodness. Make sure you're insured guys renters you need renters insurance. You may be like I don't care
It's not my house if it burns down
Yeah, but your stuff's in it and if you want to get money for your stuff
Then you need renters insurance and you may be like, well, I don't have anything valuable
Okay, I want you to go into your kitchen and I want you to add up the cost of all of your utensils
I'm not kidding like can openers are fifteen dollars. You've got a wooden spoon five dollars
You've got you know a spatula of five dollars. I mean it adds up fast and having to pay for all that stuff over again
like why would you want to like why why would you want the stress of like
Oh my god, I have to like can openers are my pet peeves because they're actually really expensive. Okay?
So you want to make sure your insurance is 100 up to date 100 paid, right?
You don't want to be late on your insurance right now, and you're fully insured, right?
A lot of people are like well, I want the cheapest insurance I can get no
No
No, I mean sure if you want to be miserable if something happens. I saw so much of that after the kincaid fire
It's worth a google google. Kincaid fire
It decimated sonoma county and the people who had you know, good insurance companies
It wasn't as bad the people who had shady or not great insurance. Uh, it was horrible it was
Horrible, so you really want to make sure that you're fully insured and like what I did with mine is
you know a lot of times people remodel their house and
They're like i'm not going to tell my insurance because I don't want my premium to to go up. I was like
Hey guys. I remodeled quick come on. Come on. Let's boost it up. Like let's make sure i'm covered
You know
The last thing you want to do is remodel spend all that money remodeling
It burns down and you get the value of before the remodel
I mean talk about lighting money on fire seriously
So you really want to make sure your insurance company if your house burns down if your house is taken out by hurricane
if your house is flooded your insurance company will
give you enough money to actually rebuild it because
If you haven't had your insurance updated in the last few years the cost to rebuild has skyrocketed
Skyrocketed, so you really want to be aware of that?
The second thing with insurance is you want to make sure that everything's insured?
So there are sometimes exclusions to policies or limits. So where I usually see that is like jewelry
Um, you know, you may want to see what your clothing is
There's some people who have some crazy sneaker collections that are like, oh my god
You have 30 000 worth of sneakers. Does your insurance cover that if it burns I don't know you want to check out?
Okay, I have sniffles today because there's so much smoke in the air
We evacuated down to monterey, which also has fires
It's actually pretty horrible if you look at california right now, there's like over 300 fires
Yeah, 300 fires. It's not good. Okay, um
So valuables are insured never assume something's insured it never hurts to ask
It is worth asking so number three
Take a video of your entire
house and every single drawer
cupboard
Cranny everything everything
so what I did when I did mine is um, especially I just remodeled so this is like even worse so
I took pictures of the lighting fixtures, you know, this is where I bought this lighting fixture
This is where this couch is from. This is where I bought this rug
Look at my bookcases. Here's every book. Here's a sculpture that I got here. Here's a piece of art
Here's um, you know a table like I went through
Opening every kitchen drawer every single one look at my can opener. There it is
Um, and then also like for stuff like your microwave your toaster your blender
Say the brand names because otherwise what happens and this is all from watching what happened to my clients when their house is burnt down
You know sadly it happens a lot. Um
If you say to an insurance company
Hey in my kitchen. I had a toaster a blender in this you're gonna get the cheapest toaster blender that's on the market
They're just gonna go. Okay, you know walmart has a five dollar toaster
So if you have a cuisinart toaster or some toaster, that's like 50 dollars whatever your toaster is, even if it's 25
Just say black and decker toaster, you know be specific because if something happens to your house
You're going to have to list out every single item and this video
Will make your life so much easier because you don't want to try to be remembering like how many spatulas did we have?
Pots and pans right go into your closet
Every single clothes open up the drawers. Here's how many socks I have
Here's all my underwear get granular. Okay, don't get creepy but get granular
Um and do that for your kids rooms do it for every single room of the house
I mean I go through my office and i'm like legal pads I have you know
Two calculators these things are like 50 bucks. I don't want to pay for that again
Um really make sure that you show every single thing and look it's going to be a 25 minute video
Maybe it's going to be a 45 minute video
If the house burns down you'll be so thankful
So thankful that you have that video, okay
Um now let's talk about preparing to leave. So I think that if you're in an area
that
Constantly gets evacuated you should get early quick. So for instance, um,
Where I live in sonoma county i've been evacuated three times over the last four years
Yeah, I mean, it's pretty much this year one of the reasons and I talked about this in other videos
Um that we rented a house down in carmel by the sea is because I was nervous about the fires
I was nervous that we were going to be evacuated again, and lo and behold we were
evacuated except this time instead of you know
getting the dog and the kid and everyone into the car and going to a hotel and having
The bellman be like what in the world, you know, because my kid he travels with a computer rig
Like how could he game like he?
Um, we were prepared. So we just, you know got in the car got some more stuff and came down
But you really want to make sure you're prepared
So at a minimum, you know, you've done your video you've checked with your insurance. Those are good things
You need to have a go bag and a lot of times people are like, you know
Just pack what you need for two nights
No, no, I wouldn't I mean i've been to this rodeo a couple times now
Um pack for a week or two
seriously
And you may go well you only need to why why wouldn't you bring a big suitcase bring a big suitcase?
You're going to want to put you know photos in there your kids baby teeth stuff. You can't replace
That's what you need to think about. You need a bag of stuff
You can't replace that that is personal mementos, and then you need clothes that you actually wear
so the first time we evacuated I packed all my
Expensive clothes. Okay, and because I was like, oh these cost a lot of money. I don't want to like
You know lose a cashmere sweater
Okay, it was super dumb because I don't actually wear any of that. I wear sweats. I wear my pajamas so you really want to
be um
Aware of what you actually wear in regards to those nice clothes that you bought that maybe you don't wear like maybe those nice jackets
put them on the video, but don't use your go bag as
A means to carry stuff. You're never gonna wear just top tip
However, bring shoes shoes are expensive hard to replace especially boots
Okay, so you've packed your bag? Um
Pack your family's bags too. If you have kids like a lot of people are like well, I told my kid to pack their bag
Like I don't know about your kid if I told my kid to pack his bag, it would be a computer
protein powder weights
And like one pair of underwear
I would have to buy him everything new and that's actually
What happened last year when we evacuated is we ended up at a nike store?
Because he had like a pair of underwear and a pair of socks and I was like really he's like, yeah
But I got my gaming gear
Yeah, so pack those bags for the whole family if your spouse doesn't take it seriously pack one for them
Just don't tell them about it. Put it in the garage
If you have valuables like jewelry and stuff, I wouldn't pack that until the end
I would suggest that you pack checkbooks. I would suggest that you pack credit cards. I would suggest that you pack anything
Um that someone can use financially against you or make sure you have a fireproof safe
Okay
And the reason I bring that up is there's some really scummy terrible people in the world
that when they see an evacuation like we're already seeing this in our area so
Um, the wall bridge fire is the fire. That is threatening. You know my home
My house is pretty far away from it right now, uh, you know between three and five miles
Um, but you know, there's already people on the community facebook group going hey
I'm, just curious who's staying and who's going? Oh my god don't respond to that. That's someone trying to figure out who to rob
That's all that is and like thankfully a lot of people were like dude you're savage
like how dare you try to rob people because it's so easy to find out where you live because if you own a house
It's public record. Like you can type in someone's name bob. Smith, you know sonoma county. His address will come up
It's not hard to get
So you really want to be aware that there are people that take advantage of these horrible natural disasters to loot people
Yeah, and if you're one of those looters like you're disgusting go jump off a bridge. We don't need you. Bye
Bye
um
So don't tell anyone, you know, if you're leaving you can tell like one neighbor, but don't put it on social media
And then the other thing I would suggest is get some rain and nest cameras
Now you want to buy these in advance
So maybe give your loved one who lives with you for christmas some nest cameras. I mean, that's what my husband's gonna get
He's gonna get some more
Merry christmas mark. Um
But you want those cameras because it's really nice if you're evacuated from an area to be able to look at the camera
Um and see okay. There's no one in my house. Okay, the smoke's not there yet
Okay, they haven't cut the power or you know last year. I saw my insurance company
They were going out to my house and they were moving, you know patio cushions
Make sure you guys move those away from your house or inside, uh the propane on the barbecue
You never think about that when you're fleeing for your life. But yeah, you don't want that near your house
Um, so I saw the chubb insurance people going around my house
You know covering up vents checking on everything making sure the house was in the best position
should the fire come close so cameras are great for that and if
If a low life comes into your house if a lowlife comes near your house
You've got a clip and you are going to publicly post it. You're going to post it to the police
You're going to post it to everyone you've ever met post it to me
We're going to blast it out because anyone who is sick enough to go loot people when they're evacuated and fleeing for their lives
They get what they get they get what they get little little i'm a little fired up about that one
um, okay, so nestor ring cameras, uh
We already talked about the financial stuff. If you guys do old school paper billing bring your bills with you
You really don't know how long this is gonna be. I've been in situations where we thought it would be three days
Um, that was actually last year
we're like, oh, you know this they should get this out quick because it was like there was only like a couple fires in
california three weeks
three weeks
Yeah this time i'm just like okay like we're not going back for two months. Maybe three months
I mean we're prepared for it and and that's the thing with any of this be prepared. So
last tip leave early
Leave early guys, and i'm really hoping you have some savings
If you don't have any savings these type of things are the best reason to save
Aggressively because the thing I have to tell you from past clients who got trapped in fires in like lake county
um
You can end up in a position where there's one way in and one way out and you're in bumper to bumper traffic
And there are flames by the sides of your car
Seriously, I have clients that has happened too who have post traumatic stress disorder because they've been trapped in fires
If you google kincaid fire deaths check that out. I mean in fairness to to those people
they didn't even have a chance because the emergency alert never went off, but
you know this stuff happens and
Sometimes people are like well, I don't want to pay 80 for a hotel
Okay
Do you want to burn to death in your sleep?
No, you don't so
Be prepared
Leave early check with your insurance company on what they cover if you are evacuated and what stage of evacuation you have to be in
I usually leave in the warning area or before that. I don't want to leave when it's mandatory because when it's mandatory
everybody leaves
So depending on where you are in the country
You could be in bumper to bumper traffic for 10 hours
And that's what happened last year to a lot of people in sonoma county
So I hope this video has been helpful. I know it's a little bit rambling
But the bottom line about any of this is look it's a house
Okay, the most important thing is getting you and your family out of that house
You can't stop a forest fire by hosing down your roof
You can't stop a forest fire by staying there and trying to fight the fire. You can't fight a forest fire guys
That's what the the huge planes are for. That's what the fire fires are for and thank god for them like
They save us every year but that is what they're for
You standing in your yard with a hose is just gonna put your family in a terrible position. So get out of harm's way
Make sure you're insured take a video of everything. Everything can be replaced
And just be prepared if you're prepared, you'll be able to sleep at night if you're not prepared
All bets are off. So I hope this has been helpful. I'm going to be talking a little bit later this week about
How this affects buying a house because if you're in a county right now that's affected by a natural disaster
It can definitely affect your ability to close in the timing so you don't want to be you know
Booking that moving truck if you're in one of those counties, so we'll be talking about that later this week
Thanks so much for watching and I hope you stay
