BIRD-IN-HAND, Pa. (WHTM) — It was heartbreak in December for the Bird-In-Hand community after an explosion at the village’s Family Inn. Six months later, a barn raising is helping reconstruct a new building to replace the destroyed.

“Today is a culmination of our planning efforts to get our building rebuilt from the tragedy that we experienced back in December,” president of the Bird-In-Hand Corporation John Smucker II said.

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Smucker wishes the process to rebuild wouldn’t have taken so long.

“We would have liked to have been here two months ago, but we had to wait for permitting and some engineering and architecture work to get to the point where we are today,” Smucker said.

People showed up in support of the barn raising from near and far. That included Martin Rosado. He drove about 200 miles to come watch from Yorktown Heights, New York.

“It’s a far hike,” Rosado said. “It’s a beautiful episode of what’s going on.”

Cheryl Swartley is from Perkasie. It timed out just right for her to catch the barn raising.

“I woke up [Monday]. We often make the trip to Lancaster about an hour and 10 minutes,” Swartley said. “I said, ‘I missed it. We got to get out there’. We looked for a place to stay overnight, and then found that this place had a barn raising. So I thought, let’s do it.”

All the construction is happening in two days with Beechdale Builders taking the lead.

“No one has been idle for a second,” Swartley said.

Barn raisings are a popular Amish tradition in Lancaster County. The goal is to build a structure in a couple of days.

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The end result of the new building won’t be a carbon copy of the old.

“We’re actually building a barn suite with a loft in it,” Smucker said. “When you walk into that room, it’ll look like a barn. It’ll have the beams. It’ll have all the different kinds of things that a barn will have inside.”

Swartley among others is moved by the comradery.

“It’s just the beauty of hard work, live and caring for one another,” she said.

Smucker hopes to have the new structure completely finished by end of day Wednesday. He says the goal is to have rooms available to the public in August.

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