Officials say a driver has died after going around a barricade on a hurricane-damaged North Carolina highway that became a symbol of Helene’s destruction.

Three rivers that swelled to deadly levels during Hurricane Helene on Sept. 27 – the French Broad, Nolichucky and Pigeon – start in North Carolina and empty into Douglas Lake. They transformed the waters of the popular recreation and fishing destination to brown muck and left a one-square-mile island of wreckage after the historic floods.