The Storm Wrecked Their Bridges. ‘All That Red Tape’ Left Them Stranded.

Ted Baker felt a heaviness in his chest, then collapsed near his kitchen. His wife, fearing her 76-year-old husband was having a heart attack, called 911. But she knew the ambulance would never reach their doorstep. Their private bridge, the only way to cross the Cane River to their home in Burnsville, N.C., had been swept away by Hurricane Helene in 2024. They had applied for a state program to get it fixed. Now months had passed without progress, and an emergency crew was on the other side of the river, trying to figure out how to reach Mr. Baker.

The medics inched along a steel beam that the Bakers had been using as a makeshift crossing. Evelyn Baker watched them through the living room window as she held her husband. “Please hurry,” she thought. The Bakers are among the hundreds of households across western North Carolina still missing a private bridge two years after Helene devastated the region. That is despite a $175 million state recovery program to rebuild such private bridges and roads, which are prevalent across a mountainous region carved by creeks and rivers.

A document obtained by The New York Times shows the state program had rebuilt only 44 private bridges as of Sept. 15. Hundreds of sites are still in need of private bridge assistance, and some estimate that number could near 1,000. Image The Bakers’ private bridge was the only way to cross the Cane River to their home in Burnsville, N.C. It was swept away by Hurricane Helene in 2024. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

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