Lifehacker asks an interesting question: What Do You Take With You During an Evacuation?

After two days of living on the verge of evacuation in wildfire-ravaged
San Diego, I've had lots of time to think about what stuff to grab and
go in case the fire comes my way. ... What about you? If you had 30 minutes to evacuate your home, what
would you take with you? Let us know in the comments.

They got lots of predictable answers... Many echoing the writer's own list.

... the computer, a hard drive or two, irreplaceable photo albums, jewelry
like wedding/engagement rings and heirlooms, and important
paperwork—like birth certificate, house deed, insurance papers,
passport...

This really happened to us in Kinshasa, not the bushfire but the evacuation. Civil strife, foreign paratroops to oversee the evacuation of the expat community... "OK, you are leaving tomorrow, you can only take one piece of hand luggage each."

We took

• a couple of changes of clothes - much more than 24 hours in the same underwear gets uncomfortable and even niffy...
• some biscuits (cookies for American speakers) and peanuts - we were not certain we'd actually reach the plane, or that a "refugee flight" would have food for the kids
• water - ditto but even more important
• swimwear - if we reached the plane and ended up in a hotel in Johannesburg the family would need entertaining
• two "important possessions" - backup disks (that was the age of the floppy), thesis data, teddy bear, carving that had sat on my desk for years, painting by Barbara's dad who had died six months earlier ...
  

What shocked us, arriving eventually in the UK was that, while we mourned our colleagues and friends left behind, with in those days no Internet or phone system to use to contact them, everyone around focused on the things we had left...

The thing missing from all the sensible lists, but that was there by implication in our list? The small objects, other than photos (which everybody and their aunt mentioned on Lifehacker - even if only to note that are also digital now), that remind you of people and places. We are our past, as well as our present and futures.