In any disaster preparedness plan, you should start with the basics: necessities such as medicine, extra food and water, but also electronics and documents packed in a bag that is available at moment's notice. It is also important to keep the electronics fully chargedso they are ready to go and accessible when disaster strikes, said disaster planning expert Dr. Chris Renschler, professor of geology at the University at Buffalo in New York.
Renschler suggests keeping physical copies of these documents places outside of the area affected by the natural disaster and the original documents in a go-bag, preferably in waterproof protection. However, if storage elsewhere is not possible, there are ways to keep these documents safe using technology.
Smartphone users can use scanning apps ahead of a disaster to put the documents on their phone, as well as simply taking pictures with their camera. Adobe Scan, Google PhotoScan and Genius Scan are free apps available on both iOS and Android devices and easily turns important documents into PDFs and saves them to your smartphone.
It is difficult to get back into a normal routine and reestablish oneself after a natural disaster alone, but even more difficult without proper documents such as insurance and vital records as it can take months to get replacements, says RAND Corporation's Anita Chandra. Because these documents are not originals, they can have some limitations, but Chandra says it's a place to start when applying for recovery funds and insurance.
Cloud servers allow users to access documents they upload from any location as long as they have a password. Physical documents and those stored on computer hard drives can easily be damaged in a natural disaster, and storing copies of them on the cloud keeps them safe from wind, water, fire and more.
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