[Music]
What's up sunshine? Happy Friday.
Friday. I'm Koi Wire on a CNN 10 field
trip coming to you from Asheville, North
Carolina along the beautiful Blue Ridge
Mountains. We are on the grounds of
America's largest privately owned home,
the Builtmore Estate. And this calls
for, did you know, the Builtmore estate
was built in 1895 by George Vanderbilt,
the grandson of famed shipping magnate
Cornelius Vanderbilt. It took 6 years to
build. He and his wife Edith and their
daughter Cornelia lived in this 250 room
home with 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and
65 fireplaces. There's also a lot of
secret doors and hidden passageways.
Maybe the coolest part though, the 8,000
acre backyard of beauty. In 1930, the
family decided to open the mansion to
the public as a way to boost Asheville's
economy during the Great Depression. The
estate is still run by the descendant of
George
Vanderbilt. And today, about 1.3 million
visitors enjoy this nostalgic, whimsical
throwback into time each and every year.
You can go horseback riding, hiking,
biking, take carriage rides, have a
picnic, gallivant through the immaculate
gardens and
falconry. The Builtmore Estate is a
must-sea spot along with the quaint and
gorgeous downtown Asheville. Now,
another part of the reason I'm here
today is to highlight the amazing
recovery effort after this eccentric
artistic town was devastated by
Hurricane Helen. It has been 9 months
since the category 4 storm tore through
the Swanoa River Valley of western North
Carolina where flooding and landslides
toppled trees, demolished homes and
businesses. And while many of the scars
left behind are still fresh, the amount
of progress that has been made to clean
up and rebuild is nothing short of
remarkable. Asheville in its surrounding
towns rely on tourism to fuel its
economy. And locals are hopeful that
this summer visitors, art lovers, and
adventure seekers will come back to
western North Carolina. It has been a
long road since Elen, but we're excited
to get people coming back and know that
we're still here and we're rebuilding.
Thank God for volunteers and thank God
for donations, but they're putting this
town back together. In times of tragedy
or hopelessness, the great Mr. Rogers
famously once said, "Look for the
helpers." And North Carolina hasn't had
to look far. Here are just a few of
their stories.
In between the rocks and rapids of the
French Broad River, signs of Helen still
sit in the
water. Piles of pipes that Mountain True
says their crews have been working
tirelessly to clear out. These plastic
pipes that were coiled up uh have come
loose and they're intertwined into our
log jams. Um it's a pretty big uh
environmental disaster that we're
picking up one piece at a time right
now. The Army Corps of Engineers has
been working one waterway at a time
using heavy machinery to get out the big
stuff while these paid crews along with
volunteers are trying to clear out
everything else. We are at it until the
last bag of trash comes off these
rivers. So far, Mountain True says
they've removed nearly 300,000 lbs of
trash by hand, like these piles of tires
and bins of twisted metal. These crews
hope others will realize that portions
of the French Broad like this one are
safe and back open to enjoy this summer.
I think that uh Asheville and the the
outfitting community at large is ready
to have people come back.
Cut a 7 and 38 by 7 and 38 piece.
After the flood, we knew that our
program was an a rare opportunity to
really be able to help.
Inside of Jeremy Dot's carpentry class
at Mountain Heritage High School. I've
never built a house until now. You'll
see a group of students
working on a project they didn't
originally anticipate. I'd do one there,
one there, one there. Dot says that
within two weeks of the storm, they were
looking for any sort of grant to get the
funds they needed to help. It wasn't
until late November when that help
arrived from the foundation rebuilding
haulers. I just started making sure as
donations came in that we were putting
money aside to make sure we could fund
this as well for the materials so they
could start building. It's about 670
square ft. It's a one-bedroom, one bath
house with a lot. I take a lot of pride
in this helping people for my community,
but our measurement is sitting at 184
and an eight. Dot says in his 15 years
of teaching, he never saw this coming.
But I'm going to tell you something. I'm
glad I'm here to be a part of it. With
years of rebuilding ahead, Dot says
their goal is to build two to four homes
a year for victims
to have this offering for our people
here that have lost so much to bring so
much joy. I was in disbelief when
Michael said that all 1600 were handed
out. Families and individuals showed up
standing patiently in a line through
Warren Wilson's parking
lot. The founder of national oldtime
radio show Wood Songs made this
unconventional and joyful gift to this
community take place. Do you play? Yes.
Josh Lander of Black Mountain got a
guitar. I thought it was great. Some of
these guys uh you can't replace what
they lost. You know, I lost a drum set
and a PA system. 10-year-old Haley
Elliot of Old Fort showed us her new
keyboard.
It's simply the right thing to do. We
reached out to our audience. We
collected
1,600 good instruments, guitars, banjos,
fiddles, and they're gone.
Filling others musical cups is a passion
for Michael. on this day. Sweet notes of
all kinds for many still facing so many
hardships after Helen.
A lot of these small businesses still
have a long road to recovery. If you'd
like to see ways that you can help, even
by just uh buying everyday items from
the stores in this region, go to
cnn.com/impactyouorld. Pop quiz. Hot
shot. What is the heaviest organ in your
body? Brain, stomach, skin, or
intestines?
[Music]
Slather up that sunscreen. The answer is
skin. Your skin accounts for 10 to 15%
of your body weight. Did you know? Which
is composed of water, oils, lipids,
nutrients, hair follicles, blood
vessels, and living and dead cells. The
average adult clocks in at about 20 lbs
of skin. Now to a phenomenal medical
procedure for one precious little
mermaid. A three-year-old in Texas is
now thriving after fish skin helped heal
a severe wound on her neck. This
happened when she was a baby born
prematurely, but her doctors say they
continue to use this type of treatment
today. CNN health reporter Jacqueline
Howard has more. Who is that? Ariel.
Ariel? Yes. Is she a mermaid? Are you a
little mermaid, too? Three-year-old
Elelliana Davos in Texas just may be a
bit of a mermaid. Shortly after she was
born, it was the healing power of fish
skin that helped her recover from an
open wound on her neck. It looks like a
normal scar that you and I would get.
You would have no way of knowing that
they used fish skin to help expedite
that healing process. Elelliana was born
pre-term in April of 2022 at 23 weeks
gestation, 4 months before her due date.
She weighed a single pound. What's going
on, baby girl? She spent more than 100
days total in the NICU, but it was about
midway through her stay when she
developed a serious bacterial infection
on her neck. It damaged the tissue under
her skin and caused a deep wound. It
sounds scary, but it was almost like a
flesh eating disease. Elelliana was
transferred from a general hospital to
Driscoll Children's Hospital in Corpus
Christi. Despite her severe wound, she
was not a candidate for surgery or a
conventional human skin graft. They were
too risky. Instead, Dr. DMS and nurse
practitioner Roxanna Raina tried
something different. They used a
medicalrade honey solution to clean out
the wound. Medical honey is known to
help safely remove dead tissue and
support healing. Then they applied a
mixture of that honey with the fish skin
to cover the wound. It's microscopically
so close to human skin that it helps the
wound start to heal. It gives a
scaffold. You see, the fish skin taken
from wild Atlantic cod provided a type
of platform for Elelliana's body to grow
new skin tissue. and some of the omega
oils and other natural elements helped
contribute to the healing process. Once
it basically does its job helping the
wound heal, then it sort of just melts
away. Elelliana's care team appears to
be the first to use fish skin in this
way in fragile pre-term infants.
Now to one of the world's most active
volcanoes showing off. Mount Etna
erupting to heights that haven't been
seen in decades, sending clouds of ash
and soot into the sky. So much so it
sent tourists running. Authorities say
the latest eruption sent a plume of ash
and rock some 21,000 ft into the air.
One tour company told CNN they had 40
people on the volcano when it erupted.
1.5 million people uh visit Mount Etna
each year. Many hiking to the summit
despite the awe inspiring yet equally
terrifying show. Officials say there is
no danger to the population at this
[Applause]
time. Today's story getting a 10 out of
10. A scene from a safari hoofing it
down a highway in Tennessee. This pet
zebra named Ed has been spotted roaming
through Rutherford County, Tennessee
neighborhoods after its owners acquired
it just one day earlier. Everybody's
just getting a hoot out of it. You know,
here in Mervisboro, as of Wednesday,
local reports said the animal is still
unaccounted for. While it is legal to
own exotic pets like zebras in the state
of Tennessee, officials warned they are
not domesticated like horses. They can
be difficult to train and they can even
be aggressive. So, if you live in
Tennessee, keep your head on a swivel,
y'all. All right, superstars. Before we
go, time for our favorite part of the
show. Three shoutouts today for this
special summer edition of CNN 10. Mr.
Bossy at the Pineland Learning Center in
Vinand, New Jersey. Pineland family,
rise up. And Mrs. Macedon at South
Jordan Middle School in South Jordan,
Utah. Utah best. And finally, shout out
all the way over to Switzerland, Mr.
Xander and Zurich International School.
Thank you for making us part of your
day. Go on out, make someone smile
today. You never know how or when, but
you may be the difference someone needs.
You're more powerful than you know. I'm
Koi Wire and we are CNN 10.