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    More Than 400 Roads Closed in North Carolina After Damage From Helene

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    In addition to the power outages caused by Helene that have crippled the western part of North Carolina, swaths of roadways in the region were largely impassable on Saturday, prompting alerts from transportation officials that warned drivers to stay out of their vehicles.“The damage is so severe, we are telling drivers that unless it is an emergency, all roads in Western North Carolina should be considered closed,” Aaron Moody, a spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Transportation, said in an email.A photo released by the department showed a large section of roadway missing from a mountain pass.The department said that any civilian car on the road would hinder emergency responses. More than 400 roads were affected by the closure alert, including two major arteries for the region: Interstate 40 and Interstate 26, which Mr. Moody said were too damaged for cars to pass.Maria Whitehead, 51, was in Tennessee with her husband when Helene tore through Brevard, N.C., on Friday. Her two younger children were there, staying with Ms. Whitehead’s parents. After learning their children were safe, she and her husband embarked on a circuitous route on Saturday to find any way home.“We’ve studied the maps, we’ve got some local intel about a couple of routes that we can try tonight,” Ms. Whitehead said. “Otherwise, we’ll probably double back and stay with friends in Greenville, South Carolina, and try again tomorrow.”Landslides near Old Fort, N.C., about 20 miles east of Asheville, blocked off Interstate 40. A statement on Friday from the office of Gov. Roy Cooper said that people should shelter in place unless they were seeking higher ground.On Saturday night, the North Carolina Department of Transportation posted on X, with capitalization for emphasis: “We cannot say this enough: DO NOT TRAVEL IN OR TO WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA.” More

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      ‘I’m in Trouble Now’: North Carolinians Face Dangerous Floods From Helene

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      As the Swannanoa River swelled and overflowed from heavy rains brought by Helene, residents of Asheville, N.C., described moments of fear and anxiety amid dangerous flooding in their region.On Friday morning, Janetta Barfield, a 58-year-old nurse at a hospital in Asheville, managed to drive across a high bridge over the river after working a night shift. But then she was met with deep water on the other side of the bridge.She tried to drive through the road that had turned into a lake after seeing another car pass. “If he could do it, I could too,” she remembered thinking at the time.Instead, “I almost drowned,” she said in an interview on Friday — her S.U.V. stalled out, and water quickly seeped into her car and rose to her chest.“I’m in trouble now,” Mrs. Barfield thought to herself in the moment.As she sat in her car, a police officer “got me and pulled me across the water,” she said.After Mrs. Barfield was rescued, she walked down to the river’s edge three times to look for her car and saw box trucks, propane tanks and islands of trash floating in the water. But her S.U.V. was nowhere in sight.Across North Carolina, about 800,000 customers were without power Friday night, with the outages concentrated in western parts of the state. The Asheville Police Department put in place an overnight curfew until 7:30 a.m. on Saturday. The police did not immediately respond to requests for updates on damages and possible injuries or deaths.Asheville, a city of about 94,600, became something of a black hole for cell service on Friday. In the afternoon, about 50 people gathered by Buncombe County Public Library’s main branch in the city’s downtown to use its Wi-Fi.Miranda Escalante, a 38-year-old bartender, was there, trying to reach her family. She knew her sister in nearby Waynesville was safe, but couldn’t get in touch with her father in the community of Swannanoa, which also suffered from powerful floods.Not knowing how her father was faring was “very scary,” Ms. Escalante said. More