Some key roads in western North Carolina heavily used by truckers have reopened following the devastation created by Hurricane Helene, but among many other closures, Interstate 40 west of Asheville remains shut and the closure carries into Tennessee.
At a Tuesday press conference, Joey Hopkins, North Carolina’s secretary of transportation, reviewed several key road reopenings while saying that “recovery will take time, and we appreciate your patience as we continue to assess and repair the roads in North Carolina.”
A database of all road closures as of Tuesday morning listed more than 450 closures throughout the state, the vast majority of them citing “weather event” as the cause of the closure. But one is more important than the rest: Interstate 40, which to the west of Asheville enters North Carolina at its border with Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains and along the Pigeon River, whose flooding has been one of the key contributors to the devastation and havoc in the area.
Interstate 40 is closed at the border with Tennessee both eastbound and westbound. The state’s database of closures shows the shutdown as going all the way to the 20 mile marker.
Andrew Barksdale, a spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Transportation, said the road is washed out for several miles eastbound. Pictures of the damage have been widely circulated on social media.
NEW! Motorists traveling between East Tennessee and North Carolina are facing significant detours after sections of Interstate 40 were washed out by catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Helene.
Here are alternate routes. https://t.co/Ir7UU0s7CZ
— Angela Dennis
(@AngelaDWrites) September 30, 2024
The Interstate 40 closure in North Carolina stretches into eastern Tennessee. According to local media reports, I-40 in the Volunteer State is closed eastbound from the border with North Carolina to Tennessee mile marker 432 while I-40 westbound is closed from North Carolina to mile marker 435.
Mile marker 432 is about 20 miles into Tennessee from the North Carolina line.
The North Carolina Department of Transportation posted Tuesday on X, the former Twitter, showing a sweeping detour around the area that involves Interstate 81 through Tennessee and into Virginia, Interstate 77 from Virginia into North Carolina, and then Interstate 85 into South Carolina.
Reminder: Travel in Western NC is limited to local and hurricane response traffic.
This map will help you detour around Western N.C., avoiding road closures and dangerous driving conditions
https://t.co/gKHWg0UsYq #HeleneNC #ncwx pic.twitter.com/25zEAmn87r
— NCDOT (@NCDOT) October 2, 2024
Interstate 26, which enters North Carolina north of Asheville, is fully open in the state, Hopkins said. But for drivers in that area on Interstate 26, the problem is that the road is closed once they try to enter the Volunteer State. In Tennessee, the state’s storm update listed five destroyed bridges. Two are on Interstate 26, eastbound and westbound at mile marker 39.6. The other destroyed bridges are all on state roads.
An official with the Tennessee Department of Transportation said the closure on the Tennessee side is from the state line to Exit 37 in Unicoi County.
Of those five bridges, Butch Eley, Tennessee’s commissioner of transportation, told a media briefing Tuesday that “there’s nothing there and so those are going to have to start from scratch and be rebuilt.” But he added that the state has already begun to award contracts to get construction moving quickly on those projects.
U.S. Highway 421, which travels in roughly the same direction as Interstate 26 and goes through hard-hit Boone, North Carolina, also is open, Hopkins said.
Interstate 40 in North Carolina will remain closed “for some time due to the extent of the damage,” Hopkins said. “We’re already looking at some options to stabilize the road that’s left there, so hopefully we can start repairs just as soon as possible.”
But local media reports have cited statements by other officials that the outage could last for months.
Hopkins said the state has been sending emergency cell phone alerts to drivers in the area of the interchange between Interstate 40 and Interstate 77. That is a distance of more than 100 miles, but east of Asheville, Interstate 77 is the first interchange with an interstate that drivers on Interstate 40 will encounter.
“We only want emergency or local traffic past that point,” Hopkins said.
What is not clear is whether freight deliveries into Asheville would be considered “emergency” and whether truck traffic coming eastbound from Interstate 77 would be discouraged by state police on that road.
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