A big fireproof safe is a great way to keep your paperwork safe. And it keeps it all in one place.

TRO

I have 2. One for a quick "getaway" for essentials(i.e. birth certificate, passport, cash), and another larger "waterproof" (for an hour) one for less important things. It mainly holds statements and such.

There are new laws to require large banks to have redundancy in place. IIRC min. 3000 miles between data centers. Also there is a law that no one bank can have more than 10% of the total deposits for the US, I believe it was BoA or City who just hit that limit with their most recent buyout oif a smaller bank.
A lot of the larger banks now resell their services to smaller regional banks so your little hometown mom and pop bank may even have some of their services outsourced to a large bank and therefore your funds may still be available even if the local bank is completely destroyed.

There used to be some sort of implied trust between banks where you could go to any atm machine and withdraw some cash even if the communications were down between the banks. Then if/when the communication was restored and you didn't have the funds you got an overdraft fee from your bank. I don't know if this has changed or not with all the new laws.
Best thing to do is keep some cash on hand for emergencies and then use direct deposit and online banking for the rest. Then if you do have to evac you have some spending cash for whatever needs you have and your company can still get a paycheck to your account which you could still access online somewhere and pay a few bills.

I am sure that in 4-5 months they will have it all straightened out as to who has money and where it is at etc. But for the people that needed their money to bug out or to live on while gone they were out of luck. Those people that did get away from the storm wrath had to have a way to purchase needed items immediately not in a month or two when the banks figured everything out. This is my reason for suggesting two banks fiscally and physically separated by many miles.

With all the people leaving NO and Galveston/Houston, did anyone hear of any "runs" on the banks in those places? Or are all the banks now part of other banks, so they just absorb the local losses as temporary?

Sue

I'm actually a little surprised that noone mentioned offshore accounts (as in the much-ballyhooed "Swiss Bank Account"). AFAIR, you can have well-protected accounts in Switzerland, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, and probably elsewhere.

Also, definitely keep some cash around, but don't go too crazy, as in a real disaster, cash is useless. Maybe twenty of every bill from $100 on down and a single standard roll of each common coin for each person in your group/family. Plus, twenty each of some small gold and silver coins. That's only 3-4K per person--small enough to carry, legal to transport out of the country, and enough to get you by for a bit.

An AMEX account is a good thing to have, but I've run into troubles in areas with bad network connections (Italy, for instance--VISA/MC worked much better for me there, despite multiple visits to the AMEX office in Roma). AMEX is great because it's nearly universally accepted throughout the industrialized world.

USD can always be exchanged for local currency, but it's probably not a bad idea to keep some Loonies and/or Mexi-pesos around if you live anywhere near the borders, or Euros/Sterling if you travel there frequently.