Bitcoin Hurricane Evacuation

Evacuation Scenarios and Backup Accessibility

This memo is published by CustodyStress, an independent Bitcoin custody stress test that produces reference documents for individuals, families, and professionals.

The Evacuation Time Window

Hurricane warnings escalate from watches to mandatory evacuation orders. The storm approaches the coast. Residents pack essentials into cars. Traffic jams form on evacuation routes. Families leave their homes not knowing when they can return or what condition their property will be in when they do.

Bitcoin holders face a specific question during bitcoin hurricane evacuation: which custody materials can they take with them, which must be left behind, and what happens when displacement extends for weeks or months while access needs persist from temporary locations.

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The Evacuation Time Window

Mandatory evacuation orders create compressed timeframes. Hours exist between the order and departure. Families must decide what to pack. Medications, documents, clothing, pets, food. The list is long. The car space is limited. Every item competes for priority.

A bitcoin holder keeps their hardware wallet in a home safe. The seed phrase backup is in a different location, perhaps a safe deposit box. The evacuation order arrives. The holder has time to open the home safe and retrieve the hardware wallet. They do not have time to drive across town to the bank before it closes for the storm.

Another holder stored their seed phrase in a fireproof box in the attic. Evacuation preparations are chaotic. Children are crying. Pets need to be loaded into carriers. Neighbors are leaving. The holder forgets about the seed phrase. They evacuate with the hardware wallet but without the backup materials.

Some materials cannot be retrieved during evacuation windows. Safe deposit boxes require bank hours and calm procedures. Banks close before evacuations complete. The holder intended to get the materials but the timing did not work. Or they arrived at the bank to find a line of other evacuees with the same idea. The bank closed before they reached the counter.

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What Gets Left Behind

Holders make rapid decisions about what custody materials to take. Hardware wallets are small and portable. They get packed. Paper backups are fragile. Fire and flooding could destroy them. Some holders take paper backups. Others leave them in fireproof safes, assuming the safe will protect them.

Computer hard drives pose different trade-offs. Laptops come along easily. Desktop computers are bulky. If a holder stores bitcoin wallet files on a desktop, those files stay behind unless they were backed up elsewhere. The holder evacuates with their laptop but the wallet files are on the desktop left in the flood zone.

Some custody materials are deliberately distributed for security. One backup is in the home. Another is in a safe deposit box. A third is with a trusted family member in another city. Evacuation scatters these materials further. The holder takes the home copy but cannot access the other copies while displaced.

Multisignature arrangements complicate evacuation priorities. A holder controls one key. A spouse controls another. A parent controls the third. Each person evacuates independently. Each takes their key materials. Now all three are displaced in different locations. Coordinating signatures becomes harder when nobody is in their normal environment.

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Temporary Locations and Access Attempts

Evacuees stay with relatives, in hotels, or in shelters. These temporary locations lack the resources of home. A holder brought their hardware wallet. They need to make a transaction. The device requires connection to a computer. The hotel computer center is shared and public. Security concerns prevent using unfamiliar computers for bitcoin transactions.

Another holder evacuated to a relative's house. They have their hardware wallet and seed phrase. They want to check their bitcoin balance. Their relative's wifi network is unfamiliar. The holder worries about network security. They delay accessing their wallet until they return home, whenever that may be.

Some evacuees bring smartphones but not computers. Mobile wallet apps work for small amounts. Large holdings are on hardware wallets that require computer connections. The holder can see some bitcoin on their phone but cannot access the majority stored on the hardware wallet left behind or brought without the necessary cables and adapters.

Power availability affects access. Hotels have electricity. Shelters may have limited outlets. Relatives may be hosting multiple evacuee families straining their power capacity. A holder's laptop battery dies. They cannot charge it because all outlets are in use. Their access to bitcoin requires a charged device. Access waits for available power.

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When Return Is Delayed

Initial evacuation estimates prove wrong. A category three hurricane becomes category five. Damage is worse than expected. Flooding persists for weeks. Power restoration takes months. Mandatory evacuation orders transition to extended displacement.

Holders assumed they would return within days. They brought minimal custody materials expecting to retrieve the rest soon. Weeks pass. The materials left behind remain inaccessible. A holder needs to make a transaction. The seed phrase is in their home safe. The home is in a restricted zone where residents cannot return.

Some holders discover damage while displaced. News footage shows their neighborhood flooded. Satellite images show roof damage. They do not know if their home safe survived. Or if the fireproof box protected the paper backup. Or if water damage destroyed storage media. Uncertainty about material survival creates access anxiety.

Extended displacement creates financial pressures. Emergency expenses accumulate. Insurance claims process slowly. Holders want to access bitcoin to pay for temporary housing, replacement items, or repair costs. The bitcoin exists but the materials needed to access it are in locations they cannot reach.

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Remote Access Without Local Materials

A holder evacuated with a smartphone but left the hardware wallet behind. They memorized their seed phrase years ago. They attempt to restore the wallet using the seed phrase on their phone. The restoration works. They now have access to their bitcoin from the temporary location.

This scenario depends on seed phrase memorization. Most holders do not memorize seed phrases. They wrote them down and stored the paper. That paper is now in a flooded house or a closed bank. Remote access without those materials becomes impossible unless other backups exist.

Cloud storage offers another path. Some holders backed up encrypted wallet files to cloud services. During evacuation, they can access these backups from any device. But cloud access requires remembering passwords and having two-factor authentication devices. A holder forgot their cloud password. The password reset requires access to an email account that uses two-factor authentication. The authentication app was on a phone that broke during evacuation chaos.

Exchange accounts provide remote access if bitcoin was stored with custodial services. A holder has bitcoin on an exchange. They can log in from anywhere. But exchange login requires email access and two-factor codes. The holder's phone number changed during displacement. The exchange sends verification codes to the old number. Remote access fails due to authentication barriers.

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Coordination Across Displaced Family Members

A married couple evacuated separately. One spouse went to relatives in one state. The other spouse went to relatives in another state. They divided children between them. They took different custody materials. One spouse has the hardware wallet. The other has the seed phrase.

Days into displacement, they need to access bitcoin. Neither can act alone. They must coordinate across distance while managing children in unfamiliar environments. Communication happens through phone calls between locations with different time zones and different schedules. Coordination becomes complicated by displacement stress.

Multisignature arrangements face worse coordination problems. Three keyholders evacuate to three different locations. Moving bitcoin requires two signatures. Each keyholder is dealing with their own displacement challenges. Finding time when two can coordinate signing becomes difficult when everyone is managing emergency situations.

Children as keyholders create additional complications. A family used a multisignature wallet with parents holding two keys and an adult child holding the third. The parents evacuated together. The adult child evacuated elsewhere. The child is dealing with their own family's evacuation. The parents try to coordinate. The child's phone is running out of battery. Communication is brief and hurried.

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Bank Closures and Safe Deposit Access

Banks in hurricane zones close before the storm. They remain closed during recovery. Weeks pass before branches reopen. Months pass before all locations resume normal operations. Safe deposit boxes are inaccessible during closures.

A holder stored their only seed phrase backup in a bank safe deposit box. The bank closed before they could retrieve it. They evacuated with the hardware wallet but not the seed phrase. The hardware wallet requires the PIN. The holder cannot remember the PIN. They need the seed phrase to restore the wallet on a new device. The seed phrase is in the closed bank.

Bank reopening schedules are uncertain. Initial estimates prove optimistic. A bank announces reopening in two weeks. Two weeks pass. New structural problems are discovered. Reopening is postponed. The holder continues waiting for access to their seed phrase while displaced and needing funds.

Some banks experience physical damage. A branch floods. Safe deposit boxes are in the vault. Bank officials must assess water damage before allowing access. The process takes months. Even after the bank reopens for normal services, safe deposit box access remains restricted pending damage assessment.

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Home Damage and Material Loss

Evacuees return to find their homes damaged. Roofs leaked. Windows broke. Water entered. Mold grows on walls. The home safe sat in three feet of water for two weeks. The holder opens it. Paper backups are destroyed. The hardware wallet was in a drawer upstairs. Water did not reach there. The device survived. The backup seed phrase did not.

Another holder stored their seed phrase in a fireproof box. The box protected against fire but not water. Storm surge flooded the ground floor. The box was on the ground floor. It filled with water. The paper inside dissolved. The holder has the hardware wallet and remembers the PIN. They can access bitcoin currently. If the device fails later, they have no backup.

Digital backups face different risks. A holder backed up wallet files to a USB drive. The USB drive was in a desk drawer. The desk stayed dry. The holder returns and retrieves the drive. It appears undamaged. They try to access it. The drive is corrupted. Perhaps it got wet despite appearing dry. Or it degraded from heat or humidity. The files are unreadable.

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The Insurance and Recovery Timeline

Insurance companies process hurricane claims slowly. Adjusters are overwhelmed. Documentation requirements are extensive. Holders need funds to pay for repairs and temporary housing while waiting for insurance payments. They want to access bitcoin to bridge the gap.

But the materials needed to access bitcoin are lost or inaccessible. The holder files claims with insurance for damaged property. The claim includes the destroyed paper backups and damaged hardware. Insurance adjusters do not know how to value these items. Are seed phrases insured property? What is their replacement value? The claim processing slows further.

Months pass. Insurance finally pays. Repairs begin. The holder moves back home. They set up new bitcoin custody arrangements. They have less bitcoin than before because some was inaccessible and they created workarounds that involved fees or unfavorable exchanges. The hurricane's financial impact extends beyond insured physical damage.

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Geographic Distribution Assumptions

Some holders distributed custody materials across geographic locations specifically to prevent loss from localized disasters. They stored one backup in their home city and another backup in a different state. The hurricane hit their home city. The backup in the other state survived. Geographic distribution worked.

But accessing the distant backup during displacement presents challenges. The holder is in a temporary shelter. The distant backup is in a safe deposit box in another state. They cannot travel there during displacement. They cannot ask someone to access the box because the box requires their signature. Geographic distribution protected the materials but made them harder to reach.

Other distribution strategies fail under hurricane scenarios. A holder kept materials in their home and in their office. Both locations were in the same flood zone. Both flooded. Geographic distribution at neighborhood scale does not protect against area-wide disasters. The holder assumed office and home were separate enough. They were not.

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Assessment

Bitcoin hurricane evacuation exposes custody dependencies on physical location and material retrieval. Compressed evacuation timeframes force priority decisions about what custody materials to take. Left-behind materials become inaccessible when displacement extends for weeks or months.

Remote access attempts fail when seed phrases, hardware devices, or authentication mechanisms remain in closed banks or damaged homes. Coordination across displaced family members creates new complexity when custody requires multiple parties who are managing their own displacement stress.

Home damage destroys materials that holders assumed were protected. Geographic distribution strategies work only when separation distance exceeds disaster scope. Insurance processes do not accommodate bitcoin custody material losses. Understanding these failure dynamics explains why bitcoin custody arrangements break down under hurricane displacement stress.

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System Context

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Bitcoin Custody Service vs Self Custody

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