WAYNESVILLE, N.C. — A driver died after crashing through a barricade on a tornado-damaged North Carolina highway. Helene’s destructionThey then went off the road, authorities said.

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

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

The fire department said crews went down the embankment to reach the vehicle, which was on its side about 100 feet from the road. Footage from the scene showed a worker trying to reach a crumpled white vehicle at the bottom of a steep slope covered in rubble. The driver, who was the only person in the vehicle, was rescued and taken to hospital.

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, who is investigating the cause of the crash. He exited the highway around mile marker 7, headed west in the eastbound lanes, and exited the roadway around mile marker 4, where the road ended. An autopsy is planned. Miller said there was no indication why he went around the barricade.

The highway has been closed since late September, when floodwaters from Hurricane Helene wiped out four long lanes of eastbound lanes of the interstate along the Pigeon River, but the North Carolina Department of Transportation said it expects to reopen one lane in each direction with the new regulation. year.