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Hurricane Helene swept across the Southeast, causing major flooding and destruction throughout North Carolina. Here is ongoing coverage from The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer about Hurricane Helene and the aftermath, particularly in Western North Carolina.
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This story was updated Oct. 21, 2024.
More than three weeks after the remnants of Hurricane Helene slammed Western North Carolina with historic wind and rain, hundreds of roads remain closed or impassable.
The N.C. Department of Transportation has found more than 7,200 sites where roads and bridges need fixing and estimates the storm caused “several billion dollars” in damages, Transportation Secretary Joey Hopkins said.
“The damage to our roads and bridges is like nothing we’ve ever seen after any storm, and this will be a long-term recovery operation,” Hopkins said in a statement. “But we will be here until Western North Carolina can get back on its feet.”
NCDOT says it has reopened about 800 roads since the storm. The department has more than 2,000 employees from across the state and dozens of contracting companies working to clear debris and make repairs. Other states, notably Florida and Kentucky, have also sent crews and equipment to help, Hopkins said.
“They’re making good progress, but it’s a heavy lift,” he said Thursday. “Every day more roads are getting opened up.”
As of Monday morning, the department’s travel alert page, drivenc.gov, listed 583 roads fully or partially closed by Helene. Most are secondary roads, but they include parts of busy state and federal highways, including U.S. 221 north of Marion and U.S. 64 between Hendersonville and Chimney Rock.
The strategy for NCDOT and local departments is to do enough to make roads passable for residents, utility crews and recovery workers. The countless trees that fell across the pavement are cut and shoved just enough to let cars pass. Washed-out roads are restored with temporary bridges and causeways that will need to be replaced in the months and years ahead.
“We’ve worked it down to a very small number of communities that still have limited access,” Tim Anderson, who leads NCDOT’s Division 13, which covers Buncombe and six other mountain counties, said Oct. 9. “We’re trying to get them at least a one-lane road.”
Damaged sites that don’t impede traffic are marked off with cones or barrels to be addressed another day.
The department is housing up to 250 out-of-town employees in the Hendersonville campus of the Biltmore Church, which donated the space off Interstate 26. The men sleep on cots, while a contractor from Texas provides meals, water, portable showers and toilets and laundry services.
“Normally during disaster response, NCDOT would arrange for staff to stay in hotels or motels near the site,” said NCDOT spokesman Jamie Kritzer. “But due to the severity of the storm there are not enough available rooms nearby.”
Major highways initially blocked after the storm were reopened within days, including Interstates 26 and 40 to Asheville and U.S. 421 to Boone. But NCDOT still says roads in areas hardest hit by the storm should be considered closed to people who don’t live in the region or aren’t helping with storm recovery.
“Non-essential traffic continues to hinder our efforts to reopen roads,” Hopkins said. “Many of our crews are having to stop work to allow traffic through damaged areas. We’re working as hard as we can, but we need most of these travelers to use alternate routes outside of the impacted areas to get through and around Western North Carolina.”
The most challenging repair will be to I-40 in the Pigeon River Gorge, where the eastbound lanes collapsed into the river in several places near the Tennessee line. An alternative route west, I-26, is also closed at the state line because of flooding and washed-out bridges near the town of Erwin, Tennessee.
NCDOT has hired contractors to stabilize the surviving westbound lanes of I-40 through the Pigeon River Gorge but says there’s still no timetable for reopening the highway that connects North Carolina with Tennessee.
Here is a searchable database of roads still impacted by Hurricane Helene, using data from NCDOT. The Blue Ridge Parkway is also closed throughout North Carolina for the foreseeable future.
NCDOT is warning drivers of trucks longer than 30 feet to avoid two-lane roads through the mountains. Google Maps, Waze or Apple Maps had sent truckers on these routes, and some were getting stuck on tight curves. Truckers are being directed to use I-81 or U.S. 74 to get to and from Tennessee.
NCDOT now uses Oct. 31 as its default date for reopening. Exceptions are noted here.
This story was originally published October 1, 2024, 12:52 PM.