Read Arun's post on the recent Earthquake in Sumatra. It was a new experience for many of us - the first time any of us got into an evcuation situation (fire-drills don't count). Arun's post already describes the reactions of at least 3 kinds of people. My reaction - I started packing my notebook, power cable and modem.

Fire Drills and Airplane emergency training teach you to leave everything - no bags, no personal belongings - and follow the procedure. But that does not seem right and it is against the normal human reaction.

The logic is this. If the evacuation procedure is not successful, you die, and in that case taking your belongings is of no use. On the other hand, if you come out alive, you don't want to lose the most critical things - your passport, your credit cards, your notebook - losing those would cause a lot more trouble. In other words, carrying or not carrying my most important items with me shows my optimism about being able to come out of the situation successfully.

Just last week, my notebook hard disk crashed and I lost a fair amount of data and emails (hoping the data recovery guys can get at least 80% back). That, and then the earthquake made me think about the whole issue again and I realized that most people around me (including myself) don't have a good emergency management strategy.

Scott Hanselman has a emergency getaway plan. His might be an overkill or be considered too paranoid for a person living in a small place like Singapore, where there are few escape routes (and disaster means almost no chance of recovery), but one should have a mini-disaster-recovery plan - to manage a situation with the least damage.