COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- It's hard to know where to start when faced with an emergency, and that's why experts say it's better to be prepared before it happens.
Thousands were caught off guard when the Waldo Canyon Fire roared into Colorado Springs and forced thousands from their homes and killed two.
One mother and daughter author team want to help residents of Colorado Springs be ready for whatever they may face next and are offering them a free book to help them get prepared.
"When we started seeing the faces of the people from the Waldo Fire, we knew that look," Laura Greenwald, President and Co-Founder of the "Ready in 10" Network, said.
Greenwald and her mother live in Southern California and are no strangers to life's unexpected disasters.
"She opens up the curtains again, and she realized that it was the fire from a 747. A jumbo jet had crashed right across the street from our home," Greenwald said.
"From that day on you know when a firefighter knocks on that door, and you only have 10 minutes to get everything that you need, and you don't know if you're going to see your home again you kind of get these skills, you get a certain set of tools in your mind that you're going to need to deal with these situations," she added.
The two have taken what they have learned and put it into a book, "Get Your Stuff Together."
"It's simple steps that families can take right now to make sure that everything that they have that is important to them, be that keepsakes or photos, their music, their data, everything that they have will be safe in the event of a disaster," Greenwald said.
During the Waldo Canyon Fire thousands were faced with the question of "What do I take?" as mandatory evacuations forced them from their homes.
"We were kind of lackadaisical about it. We were thinking it's not going to touch us until it got real close, and then we're hurrying trying to get everything together, trying to make sure we got the important stuff," Chris Classen, a Colorado Springs resident, said.
But what's important is different for everyone.
"To lose those photos and heirlooms. Because a home can be replaced, you can move. Those items though can never be replaced," Marena Antonetty, another Colorado Springs resident, said.
Greenwald said that's why "Get Your Stuff Together" covers everything from important documents to recipes.
"In my family my great grandma Edna had the best recipes in the world, and we're so fortunate to have a lot of them in her handwriting," she said. "It's great to be able to make the recipe, but we like to see grandma's little pieces of cake batter on the recipe, so we made sure that we scanned all the recipes."
Greenwald said Colorado has shown over the past few months that anything can happen at any time.
Recently the state made headlines again for a theater shooting in Aurora.
"Our hearts go out to these people that had to go through that shooting, that was absolutely horrible, but sometimes the simplest thing is just having an emergency wallet card in your wallet. To be able to have what your blood type is, to be able to have your insurance information, a couple of emergency contacts, not just one because as a lot of families found out that emergency contact might have been sitting next to them just as injured as they were," Greenwald said.
She said people shouldn't put off getting prepared for an emergency.
"The things that are important to you are important. Be sure that you cherish that. Be sure to give it that few moments just to make sure that if anything would happen it's gonna be taken care of," Greenwald said.
She said life's disasters come in all different shapes and sizes and can be as small as a computer crash, but one never knows when it will happen to them.
"The best way to avoid loss is to prevent it. It's so much easier to prevent it and not be sorry later on. Just do what you need to do now."
Greenwald and her mother are offering their book for free to Colorado Springs residents through Aug. 18. To download a PDF of "Get Your Stuff Together" click here.
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