CHEROKEE, N.C. (DC News Now) — National Park Service (NPS) employees from the DMV continue to assist with cleanup efforts from Hurricane Helene, as Hurricane Milton nears the Florida coast.
“The National Park Service maintains several incident management teams,” said NPS spokesperson Mike Litterst. “So, in the event a National Park is suffering at the hands of a natural disaster or even has a large planned event that exceeds the park’s capability of handling, we have resources we can mobilize quickly and get to that park to help out.”
Litterst, who is currently in North Carolina, is serving as the public information officer for the National Park Service Eastern Incident Management Team.
He said about half a dozen NPS members who normally work at the National Mall and George Washington Memorial Parkway are assisting with cleanup efforts on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Together, they help make up a team of 271 park members assisting from all over the country.
He said the team was deployed about ten days ago, following Helene.
“We are seeing tens of thousands of trees that are down across the roadway,” he said. “So far, we have documented about three dozen rock slides and mudslides. Nine of those have disrupted the roadbed itself. So those are significant structural losses.”
Litterst said the type of damage they’re seeing is more typical with the damage they’d see after a hurricane hits the panhandle of Florida, not inland North Carolina.
A majority of the team will be in the area until Oct. 18.
However, Litterst said the NPS is already beginning to deploy members to Florida as Hurricane Milton quickly approaches.
“[We’re] stretched a little thin now until we see what happens with Milton in the coming days,” he said. “The call is out that the team is mobilizing. We don’t have any information yet on who is on that team or who’s coming up.”
