BAT CAVE – On Sept. 27, 2024, April Blair, 52, watched as her house and several of her neighbors’ were submerged and splintered by the flooded Rocky Broad River. They were trapped and had to break a lock off the window of a nearby church to take refuge for two nights until the National Guard walked in for miles to help them.

“It's been a journey, and I'm exhausted,” she told the Times-News earlier this month.

She’s almost done rebuilding her house, the very first in Bat Cave to be completed, and plans to move in within a week of the storm’s anniversary, she said.

“It's a positive story (but) with a lot of ‘five steps forward, 10 back,’” she said. “(It’s) one obstacle after the other.”

Bat Cave, one of the communities hit hardest by Tropical Storm Helene has also been one of the slowest

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