Has any type of disaster effected your family throughout the generations? Could a disaster be a reason you have trouble finding your ancestor or knowing enough about their lives?
  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floods_in_the_United_States_since_1916

    Did you lose any ancestors in an epidemic? Your handouts include a timeline of basically the world epidemics. Originally called the Spanish Flu, because it was thought to have been brought into America by Spanish sailors.Approximately 50 million worldwide people died.

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/influenza-epidemic/

    My mother lost her oldest sister in the Influenza Epidemic of 1918. Her sister Maud, was a registered nurse, working long hours plus being pregnant at the time. She contacted the flu and both she and her baby died, leaving a 6 year old son without his mother. How many did your family lose at that time?
The policemen in Seattle wore masks as they went about their work.

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/influenza-epidemic/records-list.html

Now scroll down on this page until you see the "Letter of condolence from Superintendent of the Yakima Indian Agency, Washington,October 29, 1918. Bureau of Indian Affairs."

Street car conductors in Seattle would not let anyone board without a mask. It effected so many people. Remember about 50 million people died.......
 

    A museum in San Francisco, CA is dedicated to the famous earthquake of 1906. San Francisco was wrecked by a Great Earthquake at 5:13 a.m., and then destroyed by the seventh Great Fire that burned for four days.

    Did you have an ancestor that was effected by this event? The quake was felt from Los Angeles, to Coos Bay, OR on through Nevada April 18, 1906. Imagine all the records that were destroyed at that time.

http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist10/06timeline.html
 

    There are many disasters that might happen in today's age. Think of the fire storm a few years ago in the Ponderosa area of the Spokane Valley and then the one last year almost in the same area that was started by a campfire cookout.

    If a fire started near you and the order to evacuate comes - what would you take with you? Do you have an external hard drive or many flash drives that have backed up your family research? We  have been threatened by two fires - one when we had the ranch in Chattaroy and one when we were still living in San Diego county. Believe me, you do not like the panic that you feel when you are going through this. Especially when that time period was BEFORE computers......

    Have you published your material? Have you sent it to libraries around the areas where your ancestors lived? If you did, at least you could reconstruct your material, should you have a personal disaster.

    There will always be weather disasters in our life time. There might be times of critical decisions that you would have to make about your "stuff". So try to look ahead and be as prepared as you can be.