I have a binder with a folder inside for each family member and one for our house. It's become a great All-in-1 location for seldom needed but must have documents.

I added a couple of business sleeves to included the cards of regular doctors, agents, the guy you call once a year to trim your palms, warranty for the house, pest control kind of stuff.

Trim your palms, ouch.
Thats exactly what I'm talking about, your goto binder. If you had to leave your house not knowing if you would come back and say had at least 5 minutes to open the safe and get the binder like those who left NOLA did you should have enough informarion to continue normal life. Kids need to go to the Dr. you have all the info, from records to a business card for the current or previous Dr. Need to find a new Dr. you have your insurance info handy. Need to replac your glasses because you left your behind, you have your insurance info handy and prescription info. Need to borrow from the kids college fund until insurance reimburses you, you have their bank account numbers handy. Lost your credit card, you have the scan of the back of it with the 800 number to call to report it lost and request a new one. Need to call your insurance company to report your house gone due to flood, you have that number and the policy number handy.
Thats my ultimate gool WRT being prepared, not just to survive but to continue living as we do now with minimal interruption. IMHO if somehting happens we should be able to pick up and move or operate our of where we are with minimal disruption. Power failure, start the generator and keep living, house fire, bug out to a hotel and keep living. Laid off from work, live off food from the pantry while finding another job and keep living.
Had a co-worker who just bought a house this summer and last month had to bug out to a hotel because power was out for a week. His biggest issue was they couldn't print out work for his kids home schooling, I told him he needs to go buy an old portable printer like mine so he could disappoint his kids. Since he had time to leave they were able to pack clothing and such and just live in the hotel room for a week then return home and it was kind of like a mini vacation.

Timely news article.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/28/technology/gmail_outage/index.htm?hpt=T2

Like anything else, webmail needs to have layered backups in place. I use Gmail (sparingly now that SMS is much easier for 75% of small comms) and download/backup all my email to a desktop client once a month. The desktop email client backup is then uploaded to my Dropbox account.

My SO employer's network admin today mentioned the Gmail incident and noted that every week, email servers go down and most do not have any proper backups in place and the end result is 1000's of accounts are wiped out. The reason we don't hear about these is due to the fact these email providers are not as big as Google et al and thusly do not make the tech news websites.

At least with Gmail, it appears that there are backups in place and are being slowly restored.

I was one of the ones that lost mail back when Microsoft bought Hotmail, they didn't ave backups.

Putting sensitive documents online in places like gmail/hotmail etc can be risky because these systems have relatively low security. An encrypted disk is probably a safer location IMO.
I have copied my photos to an old USB hard disk and have left at a trusted relative’s house for safe keeping. Now these are not getting updated, but it does provide a base set of photos; this thread has reminded me that I was going to do an update !
It would be possible to setup a backup regime to automatically (or on demand) copy sensitive data to a trusted friend/relative’s computer using a VPN and an encrypted volume (like truecrypt), but you would need some IT skills to do this. Regardless, the frequency of backup should be matched to how much data you are prepared to lose !

I do use online storage for information which I consider is not sensitive eg: collection of manuals for various pieces of equipment which I own (at least before the fire!), some key family and friends contact details, medication details (including dosage), optical glasses script, medical history for everyone, contact details for banks, credit cards, house and car insurance (include and toll free numbers). I consider this is the basic info which I will need if the house is un reachable or when I’m travelling.

One possible enhancement for Eugene’s document binder could be to include a photocopy of your own AND everyone else’s documents in each person’s binder ?
If you need to you can use the copies to give to authorities and preserve the originals. It also has the benefit that if you become separated, you can still access all the info.

You could include a large size, clear, colour portrait of each person in your family (and copies), this may assist if you become separated and need to track someone down, you may consider some pictures of your extended family too ? Having a photo can be comforting too, especially if you become separated for any reason.

Make an encrypted disk with copies of "high risk for identity theft" documents (SS card, financial statements, etc) on it and a copy of the the encryption program for later decoding. Originals go in a safe deposit box. Place copies of drivers licence, insurance cards, and other vital but low risk documents in the folder in case you have to bug out.

Also, how do you protect the folder against burglary? Do you hide it in plain sight by leaving it on a bookshelf. Or, do you put it in a quick access safe and risk identifying it as a valuable item.

Is it possible to encrypt data on Gmail? Or do you encrypt before putting data there? I wouldn't transmit sensitive data over the Internet unless it's encrypted.

Thats the tricky thing, but remember all those documents are still replaceable, you can request a new ss card or birth certificate. Its mainly a time and conveniance thing, if you have had to evac/bugout/relocate/whatever you wish to call it you don't want to spend time trying to replace things, you have enough on your mind already. Imagine the NOLA scenario, you leave and don't know when or if you will come back. You need a place to stay, get an apartment or entended stay hotel or whatever. You need someting to show ID, credit history, etc. If I were a landlord and you turned up from another state with no ID or nothing to proove where you lived I'd have to think a while to decide if I were feeling charitible because chances are you would stay in my place for a month then go back home and not pay and I'd have no way to fnd you, or you were/are a scammer who says you lost everything to get a place to stay until you get eviced then go do the same scam elsewhere. I'm not going to let you sit down at my computer and download your documents from gmail or whatnot. The purpose of somehting like this is to keep you prepared for anything, I can show several documents with my address that I just evac'ed from, I have my latest bank statement showing I have a good amount of $ sitting there ready to pay your rent.

There are plenty of file level encryption programs if you really wanted to do that. Logistics is the big hurdle there, each time you want to make an update you'll need to fetch the mail, decrypt, save, edit, re-encrypt, resend, delete the old, etc. Plus keeping track of more than 10 or so documents.