North Carolina woman dies after driving past barricade on hurricane-devastated highway

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A photo showing a vehicle that went over an embankment in North Carolina. (Credit: Junaluska Fire Department)

WAYNESVILLE, N.C. - A woman in North Carolina died after her vehicle went off a highway that had been partially washed out by Hurricane Helene.

The Junaluska Fire Department said the driver went around a barricade on a hurricane-damaged North Carolina highway that became a symbol of Helene’s destruction, then drove off the roadway.

Photos of Interstate 40 with multiple lanes washed out by Helene near the Tennessee state line garnered widespread attention in the days after the storm as the region was largely cut off by numerous road closures.

Emergency workers from Tennessee and North Carolina responded to a report of a crash involving a vehicle that went off the collapsed road and down an embankment on eastbound I-40 on Saturday night, according to a news release from the Junaluska Community Volunteer Fire Department.

Crews rappelled down the embankment to reach the vehicle on its side about 100 feet (30 meters) from the road, the fire department said. Images from the scene show a worker trying to reach the crumpled, white vehicle at the bottom of a steep, rubble-covered slope. The driver, the only person in the vehicle, was extricated and taken to a hospital.

Recovery continues in North Carolina after Helene

Nearly three weeks after Helene swept through the Southeast, many communities are still reeling from its impacts as the extent of its devastation is coming into focus. At least 251 people are dead from Helene's devastation across seven states. Ryan Cole, the Assistant Emergency Services Director for Buncombe County, North Carolina joined LiveNOW from FOX's Josh Breslow to talk about recovery efforts.

The driver, identified as Patricia Mahoney, 63, of Southern Pines, North Carolina, died later that night, according to Sgt. Brandon Miller of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol, which is investigating the cause of the crash. She got on the highway around the 7-mile marker, headed westbound in eastbound lanes and went off the road around the 4-mile marker where the road ends. An autopsy is scheduled. There's no indication of why she went around the barricade, Miller said.

The highway has been closed since late September when flood waters from Hurricane Helene washed away the interstate’s eastbound lanes in four long swaths along the Pigeon River, but the North Carolina Department of Transportation has said it expects to reopen one lane in each direction by the new year.