Nearly one year to the day before dozens of volunteers gathered, Sept. 18, around a lawn in the lower section of Beacon Village, the very notion that anyone would be returning to Edwards Avenue could not be expressed with any amount of certainty. In fact, it would require a team of caring and hard-working volunteers organized and supported by dedicated nonprofits, combined with the determined spirit of residents in the nearly century-old mill village, to even make it possible.
However, as Fuller Center Disaster ReBuilders hosted a home blessing for Michael Burgin and his family, led by Black Mountain Presbyterian Church Pastor Mary Katherine Robinson, the neighborhood marked its latest milestone in the recovery from Tropical Storm Helene.
The nonprofit organization welcomed community partners and volunteers from as far away as St. Louis to the event, celebrating the return of a family that was trapped in the attic while the floodwaters of the Swannanoa River overtook their home. Burgin, his fiancée, teenage son and pets were forced to escape through a hole cut in their roof by a neighbor who arrived, on a kayak, with an axe…