Throw-It Thursday (Special Saturday edition): When Disaster Strikes

Ashley Borman, Technical Services Librarian at the Clintonville (WI) Public Library is back with her monthly column. This column typically runs on the third Thursday but this special edition is timely to many of the WI communities affected by the severe weather last week.

What does your library do when you endure a local disaster? Since last week, this has become a pertinent question for many libraries in my area. While my library is safe, many around us have been affected by recent flooding after numerous days of severe storms. Houses have been destroyed and material possessions have been lost.  The terrible thing about floods is that they are oftentimes not covered under renters’ or homeowners' insurance. According to the FEMA website, “flood insurance is a separate policy that can cover buildings, the contents in a building, or both” (https://www.fema.gov/flood-isurance). What does your library do when someone comes in and tells you they have lost everything, including the library items they had checked out?

This is the road I live on in Clintonville, WI. Monday night, April 13, it was under water by the river

The water finally receded on Wednesday (resulting damage photo taken Thursday, April 14th). 

If you have a policy in place for disasters (whether someone loses their house in a fire or flood or what-have-you), good for your library! If you don’t, what would you do? We have had patrons who have lost everything in house fires before. When this happens, usually their insurance will cover the cost of replacing materials. In the odd case where that didn’t work, we have waived the fees for those damaged materials. Since most people don’t have flood insurance, we will do the same for anything that is damaged beyond use due to the flooding our communities are currently facing, as well. Families typically have bigger worries than how to pay for their library materials after something so devastating, and we don’t want to cause them any more stress. We will eat a few hundred dollars' worth of materials if we must (just consider it another type of weeding!)

*If you are in an area that has been affected by the recent severe weather we have been seeing across the country, my thoughts are with you. Good luck on getting things fixed up and back to normal as quickly and safely as possible. ~Ashley