About 20 years ago a careless roofer sparked a fire in a first floor bay window roof. He had left the scene before the fire became evident but luckily a neighbor heard a funny noise, looked over at the house, saw smoke and called 911. DW, DD1 and I were all at work and DD2 and the cats all got out. A speedy response by the VFD (3 different companies were there in less than 10 minutes) and the oak beams of the Victorian-era house saved me from disaster.

I got lucky but my wife's parents house was a total loss a few years earlier. Again we were lucky because they had come to the Jersey shore with us for the weekend which saved their lives.

The moral of these two stories is that you don't always have an opportunity to grab stuff on the way out. You need to have outside resources, copies of key documents off-site, access to accounts (nowadays online access makes it easier), and insurance that covers replacement costs and inflation.

Funny stories attached to my fire. My neighbor called my wife's place of work to alert her to the fire. DW took the call in the main office, hung up and turned to her boss to tell her she had to leave because of the fire. Her boss (I'm not making this up) replied "Did you know house was on fire before you can to work?"

My wife called me and I immediately left for home making a 45 minute trip in 30 minutes. The whole time home I'm thinking, "Well, if I do get pulled over at least I can tell the trooper I AM on my way to a fire."

The local VFD did a super job of not creating more damage than the fire. My wife was upset, though, because one young firefighter broke an expensive glass globe for our hallway light as he was leaving the house. Turns out he was a former student of my wife's and she did give him that "I'm not happy" teacher look.