Destroyed roads and bridges hamper reconstruction efforts in western North Carolina: NPR

A motorist passes flood damage to a bridge over Mill Creek in Old Fort, North Carolina, after Hurricane Helene.

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MARION, N.C. – Truck traffic is flowing again to a key factory that makes IV bags after a bridge here was severely damaged by flooding from Hurricane Helene.

But western North Carolina transportation officials face the daunting task of restoring that bridge, as well as hundreds of other roads and structures that have been washed out, cutting off many residents and remote communities.

“It’s too early now to really get a sense of how long it will take,” said Tim Anderson, an engineer with the North Carolina Department of Transportation. “But we still have a lot to do.”

Two weeks after Helene made landfall, the devastation left by the storm is still complicating recovery efforts and making it difficult to restore power and cell service to dozens of small communities.

The bridge, which serves the Baxter International plant, is a top priority, Anderson said, because the site supplies about 60% of the country’s IV fluids. The factory is still closed for cleanup after the storm.

Currently, large trucks can enter and exit over an emergency gravel bridge while DOT construction crews from North Carolina and Florida work to build a temporary bridge to replace it.

Construction crews prepare the ground for a temporary bridge at the Baxter International plant in Marion, North Carolina

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Across western North Carolina, Helene’s remains have washed out roads and bridges or buried them under mud and fallen trees. According to the state NCDOT, more than 600 roads are still closed and hundreds of bridges may have been damaged.

Anderson says NCDOT crews and contractors have worked long hours to restore access to communities that were previously only accessible by off-road vehicles or on foot.

“We’re trying to get them at least a one-lane road,” Anderson said. “If we get it back to one lane, we can get an ambulance there to them. They can go to work, go to the hospital, things like that.”

Some roads are partially open but badly damaged. This includes Highway Nine, a winding two-lane road that winds through the mountains between Black Mountain and Bat Cave.

“That used to be Highway Nine,” Babs Taylor said, pointing to the spot near her home in Broad River Township where both lanes slid into the water. “We were horrified.”

For Taylor, a simple 30-minute trip to the grocery store now takes hours. Highway 9 ends here as a single makeshift gravel road. In other places, only part of the road has fallen away, leaving drivers with a clear and frightening view straight down the slope.

“We’re lucky to be able to make it through back roads to places where we can get supplies,” said Broad River resident Hal Smith. However, he fears the recovery will be slow.

“I think it will take years for the road and utility situation to recover,” Smith said.

The federal Department of Transportation has already provided $100 million in emergency funding to North Carolina. But that’s just a fraction of what’s needed to get the western part of the state back on track.

“There are going to be some roads that are going to take quite a while to repair,” Gov. Roy Cooper admitted during a news conference Monday. “If you’ve been to western North Carolina, you know that some roads are very bumpy on a nice day without a storm.”

That means limited access for residents and also for utility workers trying to restore power and cell service.

“Once you leave the main roads in the mountains, you enter narrow and often winding back roads,” said Elizabeth Shay, a professor of geography and regional planning at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. “So it doesn’t take much to cut off a community.”

Flooding in Helene shut down roads of all sizes – including major highways like I-40 and I-26, both of which remain closed for the foreseeable future, cutting off two busy routes between North Carolina and Tennessee.

“This is what happens when major roads fail,” said Shane Underwood, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at NC State University. “You can fail on a grand scale.”

“But even on the non-major roads, there will be impacts for several years,” Underwood said.

The Helene floods triggered widespread mudslides and blocked countless dirt side roads that wind through valleys and up mountainsides.

“This whole side of the mountain collapsed,” said John Bromer, standing at the foot of a huge mudslide on a forested hill near Black Mountain, North Carolina, where Bromer lives with his wife, Gail.

Gail and John Bromer stand on the dirt and gravel road to their home near Black Mountain, NC. It took the Bromers and their neighbors three days to clear the road to Helene from a mudslide

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The dirt road to her house used to cross a small stream. Bromer says the storm turned into a raging river during the storm.

“It was 12, 15 feet wide and maybe a foot and a half deep and flowing fast,” he said.

The mudslides destroyed a house on the hillside above, he said, and buried the road in mud and debris. It took the neighborhood three days to clear a path.

Gail Bromer says some of her neighbors’ roads are even worse.

“I don’t know how to fix this road,” she says, pointing to another dirt road up the steep slope that’s still covered in fresh mud and debris.

These are private roads, like many of the small gravel and dirt roads in mountain communities, meaning their owners must pay for repairs.

Gail Bromer says they know it won’t be cheap.

“There are probably less than a dozen people who live here full time,” she said. “I don’t know how anyone can afford a project that costs a quarter to half a million dollars.”