My parents were one of the families that got wiped out when Katrina hit Mississippi. They live close to the coast and the swell that flooded their home wiped out almost everything they had. I drove down to help clean up and the one thing that has always stuck in my head was the it was one thing to see pictures on tv and a completely different experience to be standing right in the middle of it. You saw all the wreckage and your first instinct was to call it all a wash and move away. There was too much damage, it was all just too much.
The house just two door down from my parents was gone. The entire house....just gone. There was a concrete slab with a few pipes sticking out and that was it. And I looked at it I thought 'How lucky are these people were. It was the ones who had to wake up every morning and find that it wasn't all just some kind of bad dream who were the ones living in hell. The ones who had to pick through the garbage that was once everything they owned, they were the people I felt sorry for. And two of these people were my parents.
We spent days just trying to salvage what we could and clearing away what we couldn't. But the one thing that everyone took great care to try to save were the pictures. It was like finding gold whenever you found a picture that had survived. The things, that unlike almost everything else could never be replaced.
So here's the preachy part. Think about what you would really miss if you woke up and your entire house was gone. It wouldn't be you 52" tv's or your clothes it would be the pictures. How many memories could be wiped away with one flood or fire.
I know you all have thought about backing up your pictures, especially in today's world where everything is digital. But you have to stop putting it off and just do it. Then buy a scanner, even if you can only afford a cheap one and take all your hard copy pictures and scan them. Take all that data, all those memories get a removable harddrive or buy a stack of dvd's/cd's and back it all up. Then take all of this and go to a bank and open a security box to store them in. Or at the very least take them to your parents or friends house just so you have a copy of everything somewhere else. Trust me, I've seen what the loss of pictures can do to people.
And another thing, if you don't have Wills drawn up that give instructions on how you want your children taken care of in case you die, take care of that soon.
We don't want to think of these things but bad things do happen and these bad things don't care if you're prepared or not.
The house just two door down from my parents was gone. The entire house....just gone. There was a concrete slab with a few pipes sticking out and that was it. And I looked at it I thought 'How lucky are these people were. It was the ones who had to wake up every morning and find that it wasn't all just some kind of bad dream who were the ones living in hell. The ones who had to pick through the garbage that was once everything they owned, they were the people I felt sorry for. And two of these people were my parents.
We spent days just trying to salvage what we could and clearing away what we couldn't. But the one thing that everyone took great care to try to save were the pictures. It was like finding gold whenever you found a picture that had survived. The things, that unlike almost everything else could never be replaced.
So here's the preachy part. Think about what you would really miss if you woke up and your entire house was gone. It wouldn't be you 52" tv's or your clothes it would be the pictures. How many memories could be wiped away with one flood or fire.
I know you all have thought about backing up your pictures, especially in today's world where everything is digital. But you have to stop putting it off and just do it. Then buy a scanner, even if you can only afford a cheap one and take all your hard copy pictures and scan them. Take all that data, all those memories get a removable harddrive or buy a stack of dvd's/cd's and back it all up. Then take all of this and go to a bank and open a security box to store them in. Or at the very least take them to your parents or friends house just so you have a copy of everything somewhere else. Trust me, I've seen what the loss of pictures can do to people.
And another thing, if you don't have Wills drawn up that give instructions on how you want your children taken care of in case you die, take care of that soon.
We don't want to think of these things but bad things do happen and these bad things don't care if you're prepared or not.
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