(water rushing) - When Hurricane Helene tore through Chimney Rock in 2024, floodwaters wiped out homes, businesses, and the main road in.

- It was pretty much destroyed.

- Mayor Peter O'Leary says the town was cut off from the outside world.

- Best I can tell, water and debris came down the main street, hit that building and collapsed it.

And then it came through the opening here and swept in here.

The front doors were burst off their hinges that way, and they were laying on debris.

There's an old gas pump there that you may have noticed coming in right outside.

That was in the back of the store.

So the water went out, took that, put it in the back of the store.

All of the displays were shoved to the back.

I mean, it was amazing what it did.

Just hard to believe.

It was a tough year.

I mean, it was a disaster that none of us could even dream of.

- Beyond leading the town, O'Leary runs Bubba O'Leary's general store, named after his dog.

- He comes in here, get a picture of him with Bubba.

- He says a lean left lasting scars.

- It just changed the whole course of Chimney Rock Village.

It changed the course of everybody that lives here.

So it was a very, just a very tough, disruptive year.

- That's because Chimney Rock's roads were decimated.

For months, recovery crews couldn't even reach town.

Chimney Rock's roads needed more than just a quick fix.

- This is not a six month, one year, two year recovery.

I mean, this recovery is going to take years.

And that's the challenge I think is to continue to keep the momentum going, to keep our spirits high as we rebuild.

- The North Carolina Department of Transportation took charge of rebuilding Chimney Rock's roads.

And after Helene cleared, they accessed the area the only way they could, on foot.

- So really when we, in the immediate impact of storm, when we hiked in here for the first time, we recognized the amount of damage that was here.

It's about 80 foot-ish from where we're standing down to the river.

It's a significant challenge there to make that repair.

I think there's an initial shock to that when you see it.

It's above and beyond anything from a storm damage perspective that Western North Carolina had ever seen before.

- Chimney Rock's main road collapsed over the French Broad River.

DOT crews set the goal of building a temporary road as quickly as possible.

- Here in the greater Chimney Rock Bat Cave area, everything was in emergency response.

That was our priority immediately after the storm, to connect people to where they live, to where they needed to go by any means necessary.

That started out as footpaths that expanded to side-by-side paths, eventually to a single lane, to two lanes, to what is now running between Bat Cave and Chimney Rock, which is a paved two-lane road.

- That temporary road now reconnects Chimney Rock, bringing in residents, visitors, and heavy equipment.

Built directly over the French Broad River, it will eventually be removed once a permanent replacement is finished.

- We did evaluate some new structures spanning some of these areas, but as we've looked at the hydraulics and the costs of those measures, what we're really working toward is really restoring what was here.

- Today, Chimney Rock is open for business again.

Mayor O'Leary estimates that about 3/4 of local shops have reopened.

- We took a devastating blow, but we're still here.

We're recovering, and I think we have a great master plan.

I think that when people come, they're gonna be surprised at how Chimney Rock is recovering and how we're rebuilding.

And I honestly think in the years ahead, people are gonna look at this and say, "Wow, what a wonderful story."

So I encourage people to come and just be a part of the story.