By: Charles Romans
Carter County Times
Joshua and Jared Ravenscraft of Morehead saw the devastation left in the wake of the tornado that recently tore through neighboring counties. The brothers are business owners in Morehead, and operate New Frontiers, an Appalachian Apparel Company they started in 2016. The company specializes in outdoor apparel from jeans to shirts and all sorts of outerwear.
“When we started in 2016, we noticed there weren’t any brands at all in Eastern Kentucky that represented the region in a positive way. We always heard the stories with negative connotations about coal country as hillbillies,” he said.
And often hillbillies were portrayed in a predominantly negative manner. So, when the brothers started their apparel company, he said, they wanted to shine the light on the positive things on the region.
“It’s one of the most beautiful regions in the world,” Ravenscraft said of Appalachia. “We have Red River Gorge just down the road and Cave Run Lake, Carter Caves, and Grayson Lake in Grayson. And then you have North Carolina and West Virginia, and well we just called it ‘God’s Country.’ We have always been inspired by where we are from,” he said. “That’s what the brand tries to encompass every day.”
Ravenscraft said that the inspiration of Appalachia and its people is key to everything they do, and more especially what he and his brother are doing to help those affected by the tornado.
“That’s part of what you do as a person and as a business is give back,” he said. “And it’s part of being a good steward of the region to reach out and help when there are things like floods and tornados.”
“And it just seems like Kentucky has gotten hit harder than anyone else in the U.S. in the past couple of years from the Mayfield tornado to the multiple floods that have happened. Then you have the tornado that just hit in the London area. We always try to do the right thing and give back. It’s instilled in us and part of being a Kentuckian. We help our neighbors.”
Ravenscraft said that in the world of social media you see things as soon as they happen; and in some cases that can be a good thing. He said they were sitting at their house in Morehead, in the middle of a hailstorm, when they (he and his brother) were watching WKLT in Lexington. Ravenscraft said they were giving tornado warnings throughout, but the devastation could not be truly seen until the following morning. At that point both Facebook and the news were filled with shocking images.
“The tornado had flattened homes and killed people,” he said, feeling the horror of it.
“Mutual friends and family members were posting these catastrophic images,” he continued. “And then people started talking about helping out. People were making arrangements to go there and help people sort through what used to be their homes. And our customers were talking about it, and everyone was looking for volunteers.”
“We decided to put our boots and go help,” he said of the decision he and his brother made that morning. “And when we got there, they put us to work. They asked if we brought any equipment, and we told them we just had our two hands and gloves.”
The two brothers were put to work sorting through the refuse that used to be a living part of the town, helping however they could, including helping individuals who had lost everything to nature’s rage salvage what few items of their lives remained.
“The path of destruction was 50 miles long,” Ravenscraft said. “We went to Laurel County and London, in a neighborhood called Sunshine Hills. They got hit hard. We were going house to house, asking people if they needed help. Some folks lost everything, with their houses just flattened. Others were partial loses, but everything was damaged.”
Ravenscraft said the physical devastation is difficult to explain if you haven’t experienced it. And the emotional damage is even more difficult to grasp and assess. He said they spoke with an elderly gentleman who said his house had made it, but that his next-door neighbors had not been nearly as fortunate. The neighbors’ home had been flattened, it’s occupants pulled out by the tornado and flung across the neighborhood, their lives extinguished in the process.
“The cleanup is necessary,” Ravenscraft said. “But I think that it’s also important to go there for the sake of the people themselves to just talk to them. Having someone to talk to and giving a good support system means a lot too. It’s so catastrophic and traumatizing event for these people. I think it helps for them to be able to talk to someone and to know that someone cares.”
Ravenscraft said that he and his brother plan to volunteer to help again, making themselves available to do whatever tornado victims need. They also urge others to volunteer or to help out anyway they are able. The London/Corbin Airport Facebook page is a good place to check to see where volunteers are needed, he said. For those who can’t volunteer on site, he said Governor Beshear’s Team Kentucky page is a good place to donate toward immediate concerns such as funeral expenses and the demolition and eventual build back of homes and other structures.
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
