Road closures in Burke County

The impact of Helene is forcing some Burke County residents to use their GPS to find new routes to get around. Some roads in the county remain closed, four days after the storm.

The N.C. Department of Transportation has declared that western N.C. is experiencing shortages of gas, power, food, water, and poor communications. Local roads remain closed at this time and nonessential travel is prohibited. All access points from the state to Tennessee via interstates 40 or 26 are closed.

NCDOT’s DriveNC.gov website has a listing of known closures. The list, however, is far from comprehensive. Communication outages have left some communities unable to provide updates.

Here is a list of road closures and reported end timeframes in Burke County:

• East Union near Kirksey Drive and near Meeting Street — until further notice
• Amherst Road, multiple trees and poles blocking a road — until further notice
• 300 block of Walton Road, blocked off by a tree — until further notice
• Oakland Avenue near Enon Drive, trees in the roadway — Oct. 10
• Clark Loop near Morris Loop, due to pipe failure — Nov. 30
• Rose Carswell near U.S. 64, due to bridge failure — Nov. 30
• N.C.126 near Benfield Landing, due to structural damage — Nov. 30
• Fish Hatchery Road near Kayga Road, the road is impassible — Oct. 10