Five months after Hurricane Helene severed a critical Appalachian freight corridor, a 12-mile stretch of Interstate 40 through North Carolina’s Pigeon River Gorge reopened Saturday.

A stretch of Interstate 40 through the western North Carolina mountains is reopening to traffic this weekend, months after Hurricane Helene’s historic flooding collapsed portions of the road

A portion of I-40 in North Carolina to the Tennessee state line is officially reopen to traffic. According to the North Carolina Department of Transportation, the interstate reopened on Saturday, March 1 with one lane in each direction at 35 miles per hour through the narrow lanes.