I-26 in Eastern Tennessee is shut down in both directions after bridges were destroyed when Hurricane Helene hit the state in Unicoi County and around the region. Updates to the Tennessee Department of Transportation's TDOT Smartway traffic map now suggest a closure through at least October 31. (I-40 in Western North Carolina, meanwhile, may not open before October of 2025, a year from now.)
TDOT representative Mark Nagi shared the following videos of the destruction there, along with a variety of other information about the multiple closures of roads in the region via his Twitter/X profile.
With I-40 also shuttered for miles through the Pigeon River Gorge, Nagi advised through-travelers headed from Tennessee to areas of North Carolina not under a non-emergency travel ban advisory to utilize I-81 to I-77 South into the Carolinas.
That's the route (in reverse) trucker-songwriter Tony Justice took over the weekend back into the East Tennessee region from Mt. Airy, North Carolina, where the Mayberry Truck Show was held over the weekend, east of the worst of Helene's impact in North Carolina. Justice lives in the Dandridge, Tennessee, area, fairly near Douglas Lake, into which flooded rivers flow and which has reached previously unseen levels in the aftermath of the storm.
The area had just received a large amount of rainfall prior to Helene hitting, Justice noted of what he called a "one-two punch. ... Our home lake’s busting at the seams. We had already started pulling for winter lake levels. We were down 20 feet or so" before the storms, "so we had capacity to hold that extra water. We’ve had all of our floodgates open, but still there's been more water coming in than is going out."
Until Tuesday, Justice said. "We went over there and looked at it -- the lake’s gone down about two to three feet."
On Monday alone, TDOT noted, road crews hauled 58 loads of debris to the landfill from just one area of I-26 in Unicoi County. "The storm has caused historic destruction," TDOT said. "We anticipate hundreds of millions of dollars in damage and months of closures."
Several other bridges aside from the I-26 failures were destroyed around the region, too. TDOT flagged:
- Washington County's SR-81 Nolichucky River Bridge
- Likewise SR-353 over the Nolichucky River in Washington
- In Greene county, SR-107 over the Nolichucky River
Of 13 state bridges the state originally closed for inspection, seven had reopened as of Tuesday afternoon. In addition, TDOT Crews had assessed 47 routes and repaired and reopened 25 routes.
Thursday, the agency said, crews would be prioritizing inspections for locally-owned bridges, 102 in total. Twelve of those have either been washed out or are currently closed, and 90 still need assessment. TDOT recommended travelers access TDOT's SmartWay map for up-to-date information.
