Helping in devastating times

By Jeff Becraft

Just a little over a week ago, I was driving through Asheville with a friend named Johnny, heading to do a retreat with Black Mountain Home for Children. We had jumped off of I-26 because of all the traffic, and we were cutting through the city to go up past Marshall, North Carolina. One week later, I am looking at scenes from Asheville and I actually see the road that we were on… it is covered in water.

Our son and his family live near Asheville. As all this was transpiring, and everyone started losing phone service, we really didn’t know what was going on. I started pulling up maps on the computer to see what were the greatest flood zones. And they were in it. So, for over 24 hours, we had no idea how they were. As it turns out, they were safe and they were okay. The road in front of their neighborhood was flooded, so they were trapped in their neighborhood, but still had it much better than many, many people in the Asheville area. They were locked in for many days but eventually got out.

I also looked for Black Mountain because in Black Mountain is Black Mountain Home for Children. They were not in one of the green zones. So I thought, “All right… maybe they’re not in the bull’s eye.” But later on, I got the word that the campus had been devastated by a major landslide, torrential rain and flooding, and huge trees coming down. Miraculously, nobody was hurt. One building, the dining hall on west campus, there were 35 people from a visiting group in that building when the landslide hit. Nobody was injured. They were all in cottages along the once gravel road before that but a staff member had the insight of moving them to the dining hall to get away from the trees.

Those cottages were wiped out by the landslide.

I showed pictures of the campus to some of my friends, and I said, “You see this right here? All these boulders and trees and mud and everything? That used to just be a little gravel road and over here… that was a grassy area. We even played wiffle ball there one time.

It’s hard to really put into words the emotions of watching what is going on in Asheville and the surrounding area. I know there are other areas that have been hit but I know people in the Asheville area.

I would probably have to go all the way back to 9/11 to compare the emotions and the shell shock of seeing what is going on. We have friends in the area also that we have not heard from.

Tonight, our son sent us a picture of Marshall, North Carolina. It was totally under water. Just a week before, we were there with Marshall Pres, a group of incredibly friendly, incredibly loving older people who were feeding us barbecue, banana pudding, and a whole buffet of food for those of us who were on the retreat.

It has been devastating. And now is a time we can help any way we can. If you want to see the pictures of the devastation at Black Mountain Home for Children, you can go to their facebook page. If you would like to donate to help BMH recover, you can go to: www.blackmountainhome.org/donate

Jeff Becraft is the Director of Our Place of Hope and the Director Emeritus for Youth Corps and has dedicated much of his life to helping shift the vision of people’s lives. Our Place of Hope is a paradigm shift for people living with mental illness that encourages them to regain meaning, purpose, and hope for their lives. You can connect with Jeff at  [email protected].