Wildfire Evacuation Checklist & Home Inventory

If you live anywhere near fire country, the question isn't if you'll get an evacuation warning — it's whether you'll be ready when it comes. This wildfire evacuation checklist covers the 30-minute grab-and-go, the paperwork insurers actually ask for, and the digital home inventory that turns a devastating claim into a one-tap upload.

The 30-minute wildfire evacuation checklist

When a "Ready, Set, Go" warning escalates, you rarely get more than an hour. Print this checklist and keep a copy in your go-bag, your car, and on your phone.

• People and pets — everyone accounted for, leashes and carriers by the door, medication for 7 days.
• Documents — passports, birth certificates, deeds, titles, marriage/divorce papers, insurance policies. Keep originals in a fireproof, grab-ready folder.
• Electronics — phones, chargers, laptops, external drive with your digital home inventory.
• Cash and cards — at least $200 in small bills; ATMs may be down for days.
• Prescriptions and glasses — 7-day supply, plus a copy of the scripts.
• Irreplaceables — photo albums, hard drives, one meaningful item per family member. Everything else is stuff.
• Home walk-through — 60 seconds, phone in hand, video every room, closet, and garage. This footage is legal proof of ownership.

What to pack in a fire evacuation

The best go-bag lives in your car year-round so you never repack under pressure. Aim for one bag per person plus a shared family kit:

• N95 masks (one per person), safety goggles, gloves
• 3 liters of water per person, high-calorie bars, pet food
• Change of clothes in natural fibers (synthetics melt), sturdy closed-toe shoes
• Flashlight, headlamp, hand-crank radio, extra batteries
• First-aid kit, prescription meds, sanitizer, wet wipes
• Phone charger, power bank, backup cable
• Copies of ID, insurance cards, and a printed emergency contact sheet
• A small comfort item for kids — this matters more than any gear list admits

Anything you'd struggle to replace — jewelry, heirlooms, a laptop with unbacked-up work — goes in a "grab first" duffel by the front door from May through October.

How to do a home inventory for insurance

Ask any adjuster: the single biggest predictor of a fast, fair fire claim isn't your policy limits — it's the quality of your home inventory. After a total loss, you have to itemize everything. Every fork. Every jacket. Every board game. Without records, the insurance company defaults to depreciated cash value estimates that can leave a six-figure gap between what you had and what they pay.

Here's the walk-through we recommend, room by room:

1. Video first, itemize later. Walk every room with your phone. Open closets, drawers, cabinets, and the garage. Narrate makes, models, and rough purchase dates as you go. This is your safety net if the itemized list is incomplete.
2. Photograph high-value items individually. Appliances (with serial plates), electronics, jewelry, tools, art, firearms, collectibles. Include the serial number in the frame.
3. Capture receipts. Snap photos of receipts for anything over $500. Emailed receipts count — screenshot the whole message including the date.
4. Record purchase price and estimated value. Not the same number. A 2019 TV cost $1,200 new but replacement cost today might be $1,800. Insurers care about replacement cost on RCV policies.
5. Store off-site. The best inventory in the world is useless if it burned with the house. Save everything to cloud storage or a digital home inventory app.

Why a digital home inventory app beats a spreadsheet

A shoebox of receipts and a paper spreadsheet worked in 1995. In 2026, they're a liability. A dedicated digital home inventory app solves the three failure modes that wreck fire claims:

• Off-site by default. Photos and records live in the cloud, so a total-loss fire doesn't take your evidence with it.
• Photos linked to items. Insurance adjusters want to see the object and the receipt together. Loose photo libraries with no metadata don't cut it.
• Exportable in one tap. When your adjuster asks for a schedule of contents, you send a CSV plus a ZIP of every photo — not a two-week reconstruction project.

MaintFolio's home inventory feature is built for this exact moment: room-by-room photos, serial numbers, purchase prices, and a one-click export that produces the ZIP-plus-CSV bundle adjusters actually want. You can build a full-house inventory in about an hour and back it up automatically after that.

Proof of ownership for a fire insurance claim

"Proof of ownership" is the phrase your carrier will use, and it's stricter than most homeowners expect. After a total loss you'll be asked to demonstrate — for high-value items — that you actually owned what you're claiming. The strongest evidence, in order:

1. Original receipt or invoice with date, seller, and price.
2. Credit-card or bank statement showing the transaction.
3. Manufacturer registration or extended warranty with serial number.
4. Dated photograph of the item in your home, clearly showing serial plate or make/model.
5. Appraisal — required by most carriers for jewelry, art, and firearms above a policy-specific threshold.

This is where a maintained digital inventory earns its keep. Every asset in MaintFolio can hold its photo, serial, purchase date, purchase price, receipt PDF, and warranty in one place. When you export the ZIP, every photo file is named for the item — an adjuster can cross-reference in minutes instead of days.

Do these three things this week

1. Pack a car go-bag using the list above. If it's already packed by fire season, you've won half the battle.
2. Do the 60-second walk-through video tonight and email it to yourself. That's your minimum-viable inventory until you build the real one.
3. Start a digital home inventory. Start yours with MaintFolio — the first 10 items take about five minutes and give you an insurance-grade export from day one.

Bottom line: a wildfire evacuation checklist gets you and your family out safely. A digital home inventory gets your life back afterward. Do both.