(The Center Square) – Interstate 40, a key commerce route from North Carolina to California, could reopen in a limited manner in about a month, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Monday.
Speaking from where two eastbound lanes of the interstate collapsed into the Pigeon River, Duffy said the Trump administration is moving swiftly and efficiently in the rebuild effort. No emergency project in the last half-century by the Transportation Department has been this costly.
His stop in western North Carolina came two days after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited Asheville and Swannanoa, advocating for federal fiscal assistance with state and local distribution oversight.
“It’s going to take rock to fill this back in and build the roadway back up,” Duffy said in a television network interview about 4 miles from the Tennessee border where the road collapsed. “We can get rock from about 30 to 40 miles away, it’s going to take a lot of time, a lot of money. But the Forest Service can partner with us, and we think they’re really close, just about a mile and a half over this mountain we can get access to rock that will drive down the cost and the timeframe for which it will take to rebuild this road.
“Donald Trump doesn’t move at the speed of prior administrations. He moves lightning quick. We want to go fast, we want to go cheap, and we want to go safe.”
Democratic Gov. Josh Stein and other congressmen placed a March 1 tentative reopening.
I-40 stretches from Wilmington at the Atlantic Ocean to within about 100 miles of the Pacific Ocean at Barstow, Calif. Touching eight states, it is the third longest in the nation.
North Carolina is in the 20th week of recovery from Hurricane Helene. The storm killed 106 in the state and is estimated to have caused $53 billion in damage.
In a release on Friday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the National Flood Insurance Program has paid $123 million in claims from Hurricane Helene. The U.S. Small Business Administration has granted $108.6 million in low-interest disaster loans.
More than 153,000 households, including the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, have been assisted by FEMA across 39 counties. More than 10,600 have checked out of FEMA-paid hotels, and 2,596 remain in. Another 3,200 have received rental assistance.
FEMA has provided fiscal support for 18,000 households to make basic repairs; 5,000 have been helped to repair private roads and bridges, the release said.
Noem, former governor of South Dakota, said local officials making decisions on assistance will get money “deployed much quicker and we don’t have this bureaucracy that is picking and choosing winners.”
She was in Asheville and Swannanoa, the same places visited Jan. 24 by President Donald Trump on his first domestic trip following inauguration. Noem visited Kristen Hicks and her “The Blessing Project” and met with Rev. Franklin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse.
Duffy said, “Our role is to provide money and expertise to the two departments of transportation in North Carolina and Tennessee to rebuild this important artery that connects people and commerce not just between the states but across the country.”
And to do it, it’ll take a significant engineering feat. The roadway was carved into the mountainside – a river on one side, a mountain on the other.
“It becomes complicated to engineer your way back to a road like this,” he said. “This will be the most expensive emergency relief project the Department of Transportation will have done in its 50-year history. That’s how big this is, how important this is to get the rebuild right.”
