ASHEVILLE, NC (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – The National Park Service has closed the entire length of the Blue Ridge Parkway through Virginia and North Carolina as crews assess damage from Hurricane Helene. A Park Service release says they’ve “deployed its Eastern Incident Management Team which brings specialized skills and resources to support the parkway with employee emergency needs, emergency stabilization of affected park resources, and damage assessments. As of Thursday afternoon, 250 National Park Service employees from 32 states and the District of Columbia are working with Blue Ridge Parkway staff in the recovery efforts.”

“National Park Service assessment teams are still completing their initial inspections of the parkway, acquiring the data they will need to analyze the full impact of Hurricane Helene. Based on what the teams have seen so far, significant, and in some cases catastrophic, damage has occurred along the parkway, particularly from milepost 280 to milepost 469.”
That’s from around Boone, NC to the Great Smokies in Tennessee.