COY WIRE, CNN 10 ANCHOR: What's up, sunshine? Happy Friday, Fri-yay! I'm Coy Wire on a CNN10 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 Biltmore Estate, and this calls for -- Did You Know? The Biltmore Estate was built in 1895 by George Vanderbilt, the grandson of famed shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt. It took six 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 Biltmore Estate is a must-see spot along with the quaint and gorgeous downtown Asheville.
Now, another part of the I'm here today is to highlight the amazing recovery effort. After this eccentric, artistic town was devastated by Hurricane Helene, it has been nine months since the Category 4 storm tore through the Swannanoa 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 and 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.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It has been a long road since Helene, but we're excited to get people coming back and know 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.
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WIRE: 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.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): In between the rocks and rapids of the French Broad River, signs of Helene still sit in the water. Piles of pipes that MountainTrue says their crews have been working tirelessly to clear out.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These plastic pipes that were coiled up have come loose and they're intertwined into our log jams. It's a pretty big environmental disaster that we're picking up one piece at a time right now.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): 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.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are at it until the last bag of trash comes off these rivers.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): So far, MountainTrue says they've removed nearly 300,000 pounds 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.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think that Asheville and the outfitting community at large is ready to have people come back.
JEREMY DOTTS: Cut a 7-3-8 by 7-3-8 piece. After the flood, we knew that our program was a rare opportunity to really be able to help.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): Inside of Jeremy Dott's carpentry class at Mountain Heritage High School.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've never built a house until now.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): You'll see a group of students working on a project they didn't originally anticipate.
JEREMY DOTTS: I do one there, one there, one there.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): Dott 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.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 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.
JEREMY DOTTS: It's about 670 square feet. It's a one-bedroom, one-bath house with a loft.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I take a lot of pride in this, helping people for my community.
JEREMY DOTTS: But our measurement is sitting at 184 and an 8.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): Dott says in his 15 years of teaching, he never saw this coming.
JEREMY DOTTS: But I'm going to tell you something, I'm glad I'm here to be a part of it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): With years of rebuilding ahead, Dott says their goal is to build two to four homes a year for victims.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: To have this offering for our people here that have lost so much, to bring so much joy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was in disbelief when Michael said that all 1,600 were handed out.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): Families and individuals showed up standing patiently in a line through Warren Wilson's parking lot. The founder of national old-time radio show Wood Songs made this unconventional and joyful gift to this community take place.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you play?
JOSH LANDER, BLACK MOUNTAIN: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): Josh Lander of Black Mountain got a guitar.
LANDER: I thought it was great. Some of these guys, you can't replace what they lost, you know. I lost a drum set and a PA system.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 10-year-old Haley Elliott of Old Fort showed us her new keyboard.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 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.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): 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 Helene.
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WIRE: 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 buying everyday items from the stores in this region, go to CNN.com/impact your world.
Pop quiz, hot shot.
What is the heaviest organ in your body? Brain, stomach, skin, or intestines?
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 pounds 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.
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KRYSTAL DEVOS, MOTHER OF ELIANA: Who is that?
ELIANA DEVOS: Ariel.
K. DEVOS: Ariel, yes. Is she a mermaid? Are you a little mermaid too?
JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: Three-year-old Eliana 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.
K. DEVOS: 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.
HOWARD: Eliana was born preterm in April of 2022 at 23 weeks gestation, four months before her due date. She weighed a single pound.
K. DEVOS: What's going on baby girl?
HOWARD: 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.
K. DEVOS: It sounds scary, but it was almost like a flesh-eating disease.
HOWARD: Eliana 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. Dimas and nurse practitioner Roxana Reyna tried something different. They used a medical-grade 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.
DR. VANESSA DIMAS, SURGEON, DRISCOLL CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL: It's microscopically so close to human skin that it helps the wound start to heal. It gives a scaffold.
HOWARD: You see, the fish skin taken from wild Atlantic cod provided a type of platform for Eliana's body to grow new skin tissue and some of the omega oils and other natural elements helped contribute to the healing process.
DIMAS: Once it basically does its job helping the wound heal, then it sort of just melts away.
HOWARD: Eliana's care team appears to be the first to use fish skin in this way in fragile preterm infants.
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WIRE: 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 rocks some 21,000 feet into the air.
One tour company told CNN they had 40 people on the volcano when it erupted. 1.5 million people 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 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.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody's just getting the hoot out of it, you know, here in Murfreesboro.
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WIRE: 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 warn 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 shout outs today for this special summer edition of CNN 10. Mr. Bossy at the Pineland Learning Center in Vineland, 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. Zander 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 Coy Wire and we are CNN 10.