The National Park Service has reopened U.S. 441, also known as Newfound Gap Road, which runs through Great Smoky Mountains National Park between Cherokee, North Carolina, and Gatlinburg, Tennessee. As on the parkway, commercial vehicles are prohibited on U.S. 441 through the park.

A week after Hurricane Helene roared through, the smell of death overpowers the cool mountain air over the isolated twisting roads of devastated rural western North Carolina.

Hurricane Helene made landfall on September 26 as a Category 4 storm, causing widespread destruction across western North Carolina. The hurricane's catastrophic flooding and high winds devastated communities,