News

Wildfire burned Rosy and Matthew's cabin to the ground

By Bill Moss, Published: March 27, 2025

Matthew Rogers had no access to his cabin in Big Hungry for almost six months after Hurricane Helene, yet he felt blessed that the cabin survived and that a couple from church offered him and his wife, Rosy, their Airbnb in town.

As wildfires advanced toward the cabin last week, Rogers thought he might drive to Big Hungry and move some important possessions. Instead, he was happy to cater a birthday for a good friend at his sandwich shop, ThreeChopt, on Third Avenue East.

On Sunday, the Black Cove wildfire jumped the Green River and moved closer and closer to Matthew’s cabin.

“The fire guys last night explained in detail that it became a beast,” Matthew told me Wednesday morning at ThreeChopt downtown.

“A 2 o’clock (Sunday afternoon) I got the text from the emergency saying, ‘Evacuate now. Evacuate English Heifer Cove.’ I was hoping to go after work, at 3 o’clock, to the cabin,’” he said. On Sunday afternoon, the “beast” reached the cabin and burned it to the ground. An aerial video on Facebook showed the blaze. Matthew watched it on his phone in the middle of the night.

“I immediately cried for a long, long time, and then I said to Rosy, ‘It’s so obvious that it’s our place,’” he said.

Matthew and Rosy had visited the cabin late last week and, knowing the wildfires were burning in Polk County, collected a few things.

“We had actually taken documents for some reason and some other things but not like — get the whole Jeep full of everything, like my father’s scrapbook from World War II,” he said.

At that birthday party for his good friend Mike Breedlove on Saturday night at ThreeChopt, the band asked Matthew if he would sing a song.

“I wanted to sing ‘I Hope You Dance’ but they didn’t know it. So I said, ‘Pick a James Taylor song. I know them all,’” he told me, and here, tearing up, he lowered his voice to a whisper. “I sang ‘Fire and Rain.’”

He and Rosy had fire insurance on the cabin, he told me, and are considering whether to build back. Then the shop’s phone rang and Matthew took a call from a friend, checking on him and wishing him well.

“Right now I’m in shock but I’m also just so grateful for many, many people who call or stop by,” he told me. He praised Jimmy Brissie, Henderson County’s emergency services director, for his message the night before to 400 Big Hungry and Deep Gap people who turned out for a community meeting on the wildfires.

“He said ‘we’re all guilty before the hurricane of not knowing all of our neighbors.’ In English Heifer Cove we have 85 people and I know them all,” Matthew said. That makes him feel blessed.