While the recent wildfires were raging in Southern California, we received a phone call from a member who was actually participating in a home exchange involving a home located close to the areas being devastated. The family were from the UK and had two young children. With absolutely no experience of this type of natural disaster they had no idea of how to cope, or what procedures to follow. The husband explained that they were caring for their home exchange partners’ two cats—what did they do with them if they were required to evacuate?—and he was also very concerned about an expensive Porsche Cayman parked in the garage for which he had no keys.

He explained that before phoning me, he had tried repeatedly to call their exchange partners in their home in the UK, but had been unable to reach them.

As luck would have it, I was able to put him in touch with my daughter who lives just a few miles away from his exchange home. She has survived many Southern California natural disasters, both wildfires and earthquakes, so she was quickly able to advise and guide him. Good fortune also prevailed inasmuch as the fires did not require our member (or daughter) to evacuate.

Coping with earthquakes has already been covered in an earlier post. Click Here to read.

Again I will stress the importance of leaving clear and concise instructions for your exchange partners in the event of any type of emergency, especially if the care of pets is involved. Similarly, if you own a valuable car—off limits to your home exchange partners—in could be prudent to provide them with means of moving it in a crisis.

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Related posts:

1. Home Exchangers First Time Experiences With Earthquakes
2. Weekend Home Exchanging – A Sign Of The Times?
3. Home Exchange vs Vacation Rental – and the winner is ….