More than 1,300 roads have been repaired and reopened across western North Carolina since Hurricane Helene hit the vast, mountainous region of our state. That includes the partial reopening of I-40 at Pigeon Forge. On March 19, Governor Stein signed the Part 1 of the Disaster Recovery Act of 2025, delivering $100 million in funding for the repair of private roads and bridges.
Crews with the N.C. Department of Transportation have been working hard to assess and repair damaged infrastructure following Hurricane Helene, which left behind unprecedented damage across approximately one-third of the state’s counties. With so many roadways blocked by downed trees and vegetation, crews began by using chainsaws to cut and move the debris to the shoulders to reopen roads. Those “cut-and-shove” crews created more than 4,100 debris sites on roadsides in the first few weeks following the storm.
More than 2,000 NCDOT employees from across North Carolina have been involved in the recovery response over the past six months, including central support staff and the recovery operations employees who are responsible for operating dump trucks, backhoes and graders to clear roads.
One of the state’s most daunting initial infrastructure repairs was a five-mile stretch of Interstate 40 where portions of the highly traveled highway were washed away into the Pigeon River’s raging Helene rapids. According to NCDOT, Helene washed away 3 million cubic yards of dirt, rock and material from the side of I-40, completely closing this critical interstate connector to all traffic.
Soon after taking office, Governor Josh Stein met with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy to assess progress on the repair of I-40 and to discuss the billions of dollars of work remaining in order to get people safely back on the roads. “I look forward to working with Secretary Duffy and our federal partners to ensure we have the resources we need to rebuild our as quickly as possible,” said Governor Stein.
NCDOT, Wright Brothers Construction, and GeoStablization International have been leading the repair of I-40, which has included driving steel rods into bedrock, filling the rods with grout, applying a metal screen, and spraying concrete on the face of the walls.
The skill and dedication offered by all of the staff and crews working on road repairs across western North Carolina is impressive and our state is thankful. Watch this video recapping some of the many infrastructure projects taken on by NCDOT employees after Helene and find other galleries of select images captured by NCDOT staff on their Flickr webpage.
Track infrastructure recovery progress by visiting the WNC Recovery data dashboard, updated weekly by the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina (GROW NC).