Here's a more likely WWYD scenerio:

It's 2am, your smoke detector just went off and your house is filled with smoke. Three house later the fire trucks are leaving while you to stare at the burned out shell of your totally destroyed house. Thankfully you were at least able to grab _____ on your way out.

What do you do now?
-Blast

1) Kids,
2) wallet, keys, & cell phone.

Everything else that's really important should be cooling off in a media rated safe.

My parents, the DW's parents and both of my sisters (and their families) are no more than 20 miles away. I would likely have the entire family at the scene well before it was over. The kids would probably have gone with one or two of them for a sleepover while I stayed to sort things out.

I lived through a house fire in the 80's. The door to the hallway was closed so the bedrooms survived with minimal damage, but the rest of the house was destroyed. A painting company had painted my kitchen cabinets that day and had used some kind of chemical to thin their paint that they weren't supposed to use. Xylene I think. Anyway the chemical didn't let the paint dry correctly and the pilot light from the stove caught the fumes.

I personally suffered major smoke damage and singed corneas and was not released from the hospital until about 10am the next day. By about 3pm, and using the yellow pages, I had a moving truck there and 5 guys to completely haul everything I owned, burned or not burned, to a large storage unit. burned and wet items went on one side and dry stuff from the bedrooms went on the other. They completely emptied my house on day 2 of the ordeal. They started at 3pm and by 9pm they were finished. The only thing they left behind were the kitchen appliances which were melted.

I spent the next week recuperating at a relative's house. On about the third or fourth day, my insurance guy visited the house and the storage unit and he cut me a check for expenses to tide me over. In the meantime, the fire department determined the cause of the fire and the insurance company for the painting contractor admitted fault and offered to pay for everything, replacements of clothes, spending money, furniture, plus medical plus construction, plus lost work wages. They were really good about it and I never had to sue them.

So to answer the original question, I left the fire in an ambulance with nothing (gym shorts and tshirt). It really wasn't that big a deal. It's not like I needed keys to get back in, lol. I had my credit card memorized and the moving company had no problem using the number without the actual card. Same for the storage company to rent the unit. Everyone, and I mean everyone, every company was so kind and accommodative, even the utility companies.

I'm not sure how helpful that answer is, but there it is anyway.

glasses, cell phone, G23, SureFire light on night stand, pants (wallet and keys) adjacent...shoes if time


garage is detached, zip drive with insurance, account numbers, photo inventory, and other important papers copied along with GHB in car...buy pizza for the FD

Spouse, kids, pets.
Don't sweat the small stuff. Everything else is replaceable.

Due to my ADD, I have to leave my cell, main keys and wallet by the front door, or I would set them down somewhere and never find them, fire or not.

Beside my bed I keep a very small zippered wallet with an extra set of car/house keys attached to the ring. All my phone numbers and cc/bank account numbers are in a small book inside, plus a little cash (like $20 - sometimes).

Glasses, slip-on shoes. Boost the dog out the window and I'm gone. Maybe I would think to grab some clothes, maybe not. I often roam around the backyard in my pajamas, in an emergency they may have to do for the street, too.

Cars are never in the garage, its full of 'stuff'. I have local friends and a sister to stay with, but I could camp out in the yard -- there's enough stuff in the garage to get by with.

Sue

1)Next to our beds, every family member has a full set of season appropriate clothes. I also have my EDC backpack which holds my wallet & other things.

2)My family evac folder (which I learned from you Blast) that has individual folders for each family member and one for the house, inside each are originals or copies of every important life document and business/contact cards for all our insurances, warranty's, doctors, etc. it also has a print out of important phone numbers, & a few CD/SD disks of all family photos and plus an annual POV video of walking through our house panning every room and highlighting important collections or items that would be reported lost to insurance.

Again, thank you Blast for that tip which you posted on a thread on ETS a few years back. The whole expanding folder is bright orange, unmissable in low light, in a convenient Bug Out location while we evac.

I actually posted how to make this folder and suggested documents on my blog earlier this week for friends going to be affected by the hurricane & right after the earthquake. I've one upped the physical folder idea by also creating a rarely used online email account and attaching all the scanned or digital items to unsent messages saved in a draft folder. Now I can access that account from any smart phone or computer around the world.

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.

After the children and wife, wallet, cellphone and keys are next. If there's time after that we'll move the cars away from the house. As with NightHiker we normally have one in the garage and one in the driveway.

NightHiker pretty much nailed the rest of the day.

1) Keys/wallet/glasses/phone/shoes
2) The cat (hiding under the bed or sofa after the smoke and CO alarms went off)
3) The go bag - Something of an augmented urban BOB. Created just for emergency evacuation situations.