My experience with loaning books has not been good: between them not being returned and me forgetting who I lent the books to or being totally ruined by the lender spilling coffee all over the book (that was signed by a deceased author), I find that I am the only one that respects my books. So now I make it a policy to not lend them to anyone.
Question #2: Assuming that everyone and pets are already out safely, there is really is no one book that I would treasure enough to take with me. I have many books and with my filing system, or the lack of it, I would probably burn up in the fire before I found the one book to take with me.
My question to you is, are you trying to find the one book that everyone loves and uses as a reference book?