For as long as human beings have recorded their history, we have been trying to prepare for, escape, or recover from natural disasters. Floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, mudslides hit with little or no warning, leaving us mere mortals to try to put our lives back together. Since CERF started providing assistance to craftspeople in 1987, we've helped 68 craftspeople do just that. Craftspeople are especially vulnerable to natural disasters. Many work where they live, so in addition to putting their livelihoods back together after disaster strikes, they are also trying to put their homes back together.
Studios house raw materials, equipment, finished goods, displays, and business records.
Cleaning up from a natural disaster can be very similar to starting over from scratch, but with the added pressure of having orders to fill or shows to prepare for. In this second issue of cerfnews, four craftspeople who have faced the challenge of recovering from a natural disaster share their stories. One common thread among the four was the fact that after their disasters they discovered that their insurance was either inadequate or specifically excluded natural disasters, which made CERF's assistance that much more important. To A Halt Joyce McAdams of Fairhope, Alabama, lost a month of work to cleanup from a close encounter with Hurricane Georges in September, 1998. The storm felled a huge tree on the building McAdams had been preparing to use as a studio.