Blue Ridge Parkway recovering from devastating effects of Helene

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Naaman Horn of the National Parks Service says the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina remains closed as structures and roadways in the area remain damaged in the aftermath of Helene's flooding.

Transcript

00:00Blue Ridge Parkway on my bucket list. It runs nearly 50 miles from Virginia through places like

00:05Asheville, North Carolina, and here with more on the damage from there and other parts of the

00:10National Park Service and this region is the spokesperson, Naman Horn, who is joining us this

00:16morning. Thank you for your time. We want to know what's the latest on the damage along the Blue

00:20Ridge Parkway. So there was pretty substantial damage all across the region and the Blue Ridge

00:31Parkway was no different. We did have more damage in North Carolina than we did in Virginia and we

00:37were able to pretty quickly reopen about 200 miles of parkway in Virginia. Currently nothing in North

00:45Carolina is open. There are several areas along the parkway where there's structural damage on

00:51the road. We're still assessing that. There's a lot of trees down on the road. Right now we realize

00:56the parkway is a critical artery for community connectivity and we're trying to focus on areas

01:01of the parkway that are most important for the community to get around and do their business. But

01:05currently we are encouraging folks in North Carolina to not try and get on the parkway. The

01:10whole parkway in this state is closed and we thank you for your patience as you wait for us

01:16to get this open. Yeah I know it'll be quite the process to get everything back up and running.

01:21What about damage within the National Parks? Are parts of the Great Spokane Mountain Parks closed?

01:29Right now there are a number of parks closed across the region

01:33but the Blue Ridge Parkway did sustain the most damage from the parks from hailing.

01:41And for those that are trying to take that trip I know like I said it's on the bucket list for a

01:46lot of folks. What's the best way to find out if you can go to that part of the National Park or

01:51if you need to reschedule? Absolutely for any National Park if you go to nps.gov and you can

01:58search by state and you can search by park and you can pull up that park's website. There's also a

02:02National Park Service app on phones or smart devices that you can get and those will all have

02:07current information about openings and closures. We always advise to check before you go you don't

02:13want to show up to a place and have it be closed or have no water or other services available. So

02:18know before you go check our website give us a call but once we get open we'd love to have folks

02:24back we realize how important these parks are to our communities. And I have one more quick question

02:29how are the park systems how are they trying to help the people around because obviously the

02:34devastation is just beyond the park itself. Absolutely that's a great question. There are

02:42of course a ton of different agencies federal state and local agencies that are working on

02:47providing help for people. The Park Service our focus is of course the National Parks

02:53and as I said before we recognize that the Blue Ridge Parkway is an incredible artery for people

02:58to get around and just get about their normal lives and so our focus is getting access to

03:04those people and opening up what sections where we can that provide that critical access.

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