馃攳
How To Prepare Your Home For Natural Disasters (Homeowners & Renters - First Time Home Buyer Tips) 馃彙 - YouTube
Channel: Jennifer Beeston
[0]
Today we're going to be talking about natural disasters and how to prepare for natural disaster whether you're a renter
[7]
Or a homeowner. It's important either way. So as we're seeing across the country
[12]
we're seeing more and more extreme weather patterns a great example of that right now and the reason i'm doing this video is because
[18]
California is on fire california's on fire. I literally just filmed this entire video it was long. It was like 20 minutes
[25]
And none of it filmed because I got a fire alert in the middle that the fire has grown
[31]
Yay, okay, so we're doing round two here so
[35]
What the heck do you need to do to prepare? Okay, so as I sit here right now, um my house
[42]
You know where I predominantly live is four miles away from the wall bridge fire. Yeah, google it google it
[49]
It's the thing of nightmares
[51]
It's a thing of nightmares
[52]
But i'm sitting here smiling because i'm used to it i'm used to it and i've done my homework. I turned in my homework
[58]
So I know that no matter what happens i'm going to be okay?
[62]
So right now we're going to talk about that homework that you want to work on if you are faced with a natural disaster situation
[70]
and this stuff is something you should do every year anyways, because you may think you're not in the natural disaster area right now, but
[78]
Arizona has fires colorado has fires. Um, my husband and I last night were like, where do we go if this does this again?
[86]
Um, and we're like, well, I like florida florida's beautiful
[90]
hurricanes, I mean it's it's new york's great flooding, you know, uh,
[95]
there was
[97]
New york had tornadoes this year, which was crazy
[100]
Like I got this alert in brooklyn that there were tornadoes I was like, how is this happening? Anyways weather's getting more extreme
[105]
So it's important to prepare and be ready to go
[108]
number one and the most important thing
[111]
Insurance. Oh my goodness. Make sure you're insured guys renters you need renters insurance. You may be like I don't care
[118]
It's not my house if it burns down
[120]
Yeah, but your stuff's in it and if you want to get money for your stuff
[123]
Then you need renters insurance and you may be like, well, I don't have anything valuable
[128]
Okay, I want you to go into your kitchen and I want you to add up the cost of all of your utensils
[133]
I'm not kidding like can openers are fifteen dollars. You've got a wooden spoon five dollars
[137]
You've got you know a spatula of five dollars. I mean it adds up fast and having to pay for all that stuff over again
[145]
like why would you want to like why why would you want the stress of like
[150]
Oh my god, I have to like can openers are my pet peeves because they're actually really expensive. Okay?
[156]
So you want to make sure your insurance is 100 up to date 100 paid, right?
[161]
You don't want to be late on your insurance right now, and you're fully insured, right?
[166]
A lot of people are like well, I want the cheapest insurance I can get no
[170]
No
[171]
No, I mean sure if you want to be miserable if something happens. I saw so much of that after the kincaid fire
[179]
It's worth a google google. Kincaid fire
[181]
It decimated sonoma county and the people who had you know, good insurance companies
[186]
It wasn't as bad the people who had shady or not great insurance. Uh, it was horrible it was
[192]
Horrible, so you really want to make sure that you're fully insured and like what I did with mine is
[198]
you know a lot of times people remodel their house and
[200]
They're like i'm not going to tell my insurance because I don't want my premium to to go up. I was like
[204]
Hey guys. I remodeled quick come on. Come on. Let's boost it up. Like let's make sure i'm covered
[211]
You know
[211]
The last thing you want to do is remodel spend all that money remodeling
[215]
It burns down and you get the value of before the remodel
[219]
I mean talk about lighting money on fire seriously
[222]
So you really want to make sure your insurance company if your house burns down if your house is taken out by hurricane
[228]
if your house is flooded your insurance company will
[232]
give you enough money to actually rebuild it because
[235]
If you haven't had your insurance updated in the last few years the cost to rebuild has skyrocketed
[241]
Skyrocketed, so you really want to be aware of that?
[244]
The second thing with insurance is you want to make sure that everything's insured?
[249]
So there are sometimes exclusions to policies or limits. So where I usually see that is like jewelry
[256]
Um, you know, you may want to see what your clothing is
[259]
There's some people who have some crazy sneaker collections that are like, oh my god
[262]
You have 30 000 worth of sneakers. Does your insurance cover that if it burns I don't know you want to check out?
[268]
Okay, I have sniffles today because there's so much smoke in the air
[273]
We evacuated down to monterey, which also has fires
[277]
It's actually pretty horrible if you look at california right now, there's like over 300 fires
[283]
Yeah, 300 fires. It's not good. Okay, um
[288]
So valuables are insured never assume something's insured it never hurts to ask
[294]
It is worth asking so number three
[297]
Take a video of your entire
[300]
house and every single drawer
[303]
cupboard
[305]
Cranny everything everything
[307]
so what I did when I did mine is um, especially I just remodeled so this is like even worse so
[314]
I took pictures of the lighting fixtures, you know, this is where I bought this lighting fixture
[318]
This is where this couch is from. This is where I bought this rug
[322]
Look at my bookcases. Here's every book. Here's a sculpture that I got here. Here's a piece of art
[329]
Here's um, you know a table like I went through
[332]
Opening every kitchen drawer every single one look at my can opener. There it is
[339]
Um, and then also like for stuff like your microwave your toaster your blender
[345]
Say the brand names because otherwise what happens and this is all from watching what happened to my clients when their house is burnt down
[351]
You know sadly it happens a lot. Um
[354]
If you say to an insurance company
[356]
Hey in my kitchen. I had a toaster a blender in this you're gonna get the cheapest toaster blender that's on the market
[362]
They're just gonna go. Okay, you know walmart has a five dollar toaster
[366]
So if you have a cuisinart toaster or some toaster, that's like 50 dollars whatever your toaster is, even if it's 25
[373]
Just say black and decker toaster, you know be specific because if something happens to your house
[379]
You're going to have to list out every single item and this video
[384]
Will make your life so much easier because you don't want to try to be remembering like how many spatulas did we have?
[393]
Pots and pans right go into your closet
[398]
Every single clothes open up the drawers. Here's how many socks I have
[404]
Here's all my underwear get granular. Okay, don't get creepy but get granular
[410]
Um and do that for your kids rooms do it for every single room of the house
[413]
I mean I go through my office and i'm like legal pads I have you know
[419]
Two calculators these things are like 50 bucks. I don't want to pay for that again
[424]
Um really make sure that you show every single thing and look it's going to be a 25 minute video
[429]
Maybe it's going to be a 45 minute video
[432]
If the house burns down you'll be so thankful
[436]
So thankful that you have that video, okay
[439]
Um now let's talk about preparing to leave. So I think that if you're in an area
[445]
that
[446]
Constantly gets evacuated you should get early quick. So for instance, um,
[451]
Where I live in sonoma county i've been evacuated three times over the last four years
[456]
Yeah, I mean, it's pretty much this year one of the reasons and I talked about this in other videos
[461]
Um that we rented a house down in carmel by the sea is because I was nervous about the fires
[466]
I was nervous that we were going to be evacuated again, and lo and behold we were
[470]
evacuated except this time instead of you know
[472]
getting the dog and the kid and everyone into the car and going to a hotel and having
[478]
The bellman be like what in the world, you know, because my kid he travels with a computer rig
[482]
Like how could he game like he?
[485]
Um, we were prepared. So we just, you know got in the car got some more stuff and came down
[491]
But you really want to make sure you're prepared
[493]
So at a minimum, you know, you've done your video you've checked with your insurance. Those are good things
[499]
You need to have a go bag and a lot of times people are like, you know
[502]
Just pack what you need for two nights
[504]
No, no, I wouldn't I mean i've been to this rodeo a couple times now
[508]
Um pack for a week or two
[511]
seriously
[512]
And you may go well you only need to why why wouldn't you bring a big suitcase bring a big suitcase?
[516]
You're going to want to put you know photos in there your kids baby teeth stuff. You can't replace
[521]
That's what you need to think about. You need a bag of stuff
[524]
You can't replace that that is personal mementos, and then you need clothes that you actually wear
[530]
so the first time we evacuated I packed all my
[534]
Expensive clothes. Okay, and because I was like, oh these cost a lot of money. I don't want to like
[539]
You know lose a cashmere sweater
[541]
Okay, it was super dumb because I don't actually wear any of that. I wear sweats. I wear my pajamas so you really want to
[547]
be um
[548]
Aware of what you actually wear in regards to those nice clothes that you bought that maybe you don't wear like maybe those nice jackets
[556]
put them on the video, but don't use your go bag as
[561]
A means to carry stuff. You're never gonna wear just top tip
[565]
However, bring shoes shoes are expensive hard to replace especially boots
[570]
Okay, so you've packed your bag? Um
[572]
Pack your family's bags too. If you have kids like a lot of people are like well, I told my kid to pack their bag
[578]
Like I don't know about your kid if I told my kid to pack his bag, it would be a computer
[582]
protein powder weights
[585]
And like one pair of underwear
[589]
I would have to buy him everything new and that's actually
[593]
What happened last year when we evacuated is we ended up at a nike store?
[596]
Because he had like a pair of underwear and a pair of socks and I was like really he's like, yeah
[601]
But I got my gaming gear
[606]
Yeah, so pack those bags for the whole family if your spouse doesn't take it seriously pack one for them
[611]
Just don't tell them about it. Put it in the garage
[613]
If you have valuables like jewelry and stuff, I wouldn't pack that until the end
[617]
I would suggest that you pack checkbooks. I would suggest that you pack credit cards. I would suggest that you pack anything
[623]
Um that someone can use financially against you or make sure you have a fireproof safe
[628]
Okay
[628]
And the reason I bring that up is there's some really scummy terrible people in the world
[633]
that when they see an evacuation like we're already seeing this in our area so
[638]
Um, the wall bridge fire is the fire. That is threatening. You know my home
[643]
My house is pretty far away from it right now, uh, you know between three and five miles
[649]
Um, but you know, there's already people on the community facebook group going hey
[654]
I'm, just curious who's staying and who's going? Oh my god don't respond to that. That's someone trying to figure out who to rob
[661]
That's all that is and like thankfully a lot of people were like dude you're savage
[665]
like how dare you try to rob people because it's so easy to find out where you live because if you own a house
[671]
It's public record. Like you can type in someone's name bob. Smith, you know sonoma county. His address will come up
[677]
It's not hard to get
[679]
So you really want to be aware that there are people that take advantage of these horrible natural disasters to loot people
[686]
Yeah, and if you're one of those looters like you're disgusting go jump off a bridge. We don't need you. Bye
[692]
Bye
[693]
um
[694]
So don't tell anyone, you know, if you're leaving you can tell like one neighbor, but don't put it on social media
[699]
And then the other thing I would suggest is get some rain and nest cameras
[703]
Now you want to buy these in advance
[704]
So maybe give your loved one who lives with you for christmas some nest cameras. I mean, that's what my husband's gonna get
[711]
He's gonna get some more
[712]
Merry christmas mark. Um
[714]
But you want those cameras because it's really nice if you're evacuated from an area to be able to look at the camera
[721]
Um and see okay. There's no one in my house. Okay, the smoke's not there yet
[726]
Okay, they haven't cut the power or you know last year. I saw my insurance company
[731]
They were going out to my house and they were moving, you know patio cushions
[734]
Make sure you guys move those away from your house or inside, uh the propane on the barbecue
[739]
You never think about that when you're fleeing for your life. But yeah, you don't want that near your house
[744]
Um, so I saw the chubb insurance people going around my house
[748]
You know covering up vents checking on everything making sure the house was in the best position
[753]
should the fire come close so cameras are great for that and if
[757]
If a low life comes into your house if a lowlife comes near your house
[762]
You've got a clip and you are going to publicly post it. You're going to post it to the police
[766]
You're going to post it to everyone you've ever met post it to me
[770]
We're going to blast it out because anyone who is sick enough to go loot people when they're evacuated and fleeing for their lives
[778]
They get what they get they get what they get little little i'm a little fired up about that one
[783]
um, okay, so nestor ring cameras, uh
[786]
We already talked about the financial stuff. If you guys do old school paper billing bring your bills with you
[791]
You really don't know how long this is gonna be. I've been in situations where we thought it would be three days
[796]
Um, that was actually last year
[797]
we're like, oh, you know this they should get this out quick because it was like there was only like a couple fires in
[803]
california three weeks
[805]
three weeks
[806]
Yeah this time i'm just like okay like we're not going back for two months. Maybe three months
[812]
I mean we're prepared for it and and that's the thing with any of this be prepared. So
[817]
last tip leave early
[819]
Leave early guys, and i'm really hoping you have some savings
[822]
If you don't have any savings these type of things are the best reason to save
[827]
Aggressively because the thing I have to tell you from past clients who got trapped in fires in like lake county
[833]
um
[833]
You can end up in a position where there's one way in and one way out and you're in bumper to bumper traffic
[838]
And there are flames by the sides of your car
[841]
Seriously, I have clients that has happened too who have post traumatic stress disorder because they've been trapped in fires
[848]
If you google kincaid fire deaths check that out. I mean in fairness to to those people
[853]
they didn't even have a chance because the emergency alert never went off, but
[858]
you know this stuff happens and
[861]
Sometimes people are like well, I don't want to pay 80 for a hotel
[864]
Okay
[866]
Do you want to burn to death in your sleep?
[869]
No, you don't so
[871]
Be prepared
[872]
Leave early check with your insurance company on what they cover if you are evacuated and what stage of evacuation you have to be in
[880]
I usually leave in the warning area or before that. I don't want to leave when it's mandatory because when it's mandatory
[887]
everybody leaves
[888]
So depending on where you are in the country
[890]
You could be in bumper to bumper traffic for 10 hours
[893]
And that's what happened last year to a lot of people in sonoma county
[896]
So I hope this video has been helpful. I know it's a little bit rambling
[900]
But the bottom line about any of this is look it's a house
[904]
Okay, the most important thing is getting you and your family out of that house
[908]
You can't stop a forest fire by hosing down your roof
[912]
You can't stop a forest fire by staying there and trying to fight the fire. You can't fight a forest fire guys
[919]
That's what the the huge planes are for. That's what the fire fires are for and thank god for them like
[927]
They save us every year but that is what they're for
[930]
You standing in your yard with a hose is just gonna put your family in a terrible position. So get out of harm's way
[936]
Make sure you're insured take a video of everything. Everything can be replaced
[942]
And just be prepared if you're prepared, you'll be able to sleep at night if you're not prepared
[948]
All bets are off. So I hope this has been helpful. I'm going to be talking a little bit later this week about
[954]
How this affects buying a house because if you're in a county right now that's affected by a natural disaster
[960]
It can definitely affect your ability to close in the timing so you don't want to be you know
[965]
Booking that moving truck if you're in one of those counties, so we'll be talking about that later this week
[970]
Thanks so much for watching and I hope you stay
Most Recent Videos:
You can go back to the homepage right here: Homepage