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Marty Kuritz is a retired estate and financial planner living in Escondido, California, just north of San Diego. He also is the author of the free "Disaster Preparedness Guide and Checklist" that ElderLawAnswers has publicized. At 4:16 am on Monday, October 22, Marty and his wife, Sandi, were awakened by a reverse 911 call warning that wildfires raging in the area were threatening their neighborhood and the couple was strongly advised to evacuate immediately. Within half an hour, the Kurtizes -- along with their nine-year-old grandson, three dogs, two cats, two rats and a parakeet -- were in their car heading west to their daughter's home, out of harm's way. On Wednesday morning, the family was told that it was safe to return to their home, which, to their great relief, the fires had spared. Thankfully, more than a decade ago Marty and Sandi had developed an evacuation plan. The plan included, among other things, what items they needed to take with them, where they would evacuate to, and a central (out of state) person each could contact in the event local communications went down. "If there is a lesson to be learned from this terrible ordeal, it's being prepared," Marty says. "During the thirty minutes prior to evacuating, in addition to packing our vehicle with basic necessities, we were able to take with us our valuables, important papers and many irreplaceable items. In essence, we followed the advice in the Disaster Preparedness Guide I had written some time back. It's good advice!" To download a copy of the Disaster Preparedness Guide in PDF format, click here. (If you do not have the free PDF reader installed on your computer, download it here.)
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