TRYON, N.C. -- At least one resident of the North Carolina mountains is dead after heavy rains triggered mudslides and flooding.

• Woman's body has been recovered.
• Her home was damaged by a mudslide.
• I-26 was closed for several hours overnight.

Polk County Manager Marche Pittman said Saturday that searchers have recovered the body of a woman whose home was crushed by a mudslide in an area of rolling hills near the town of Tryon. The area is along the South Carolina in the Blue Ridge Mountain foothills.

Pittman says searchers are checking whether mudslides have damaged other structures, but flooding made some areas are impassible. 

North Carolina highway authorities say Interstate 26 was closed for about seven hours overnight until water flooding the highway receded.

Pittman says the area has seen rain off and on for most of the past week before heavy rain hit Friday evening.

Those same storms caused serious problems elsewhere in the mountains and foothills. Both Edgemont Road and Pilot Ridge Road in Avery County are closed.

“A lot of rain in a short amount of time. The pipes can't handle that volume in a short amount of time,” Avery County Maintenance Engineer Travis Henley said.

Because of that, a large portion of pilot ridge road crumbled.

“The soil loses the ability to hold itself together and we have had some slop failures, roadway failures,” he said.

Failures that went all way from Pilot Ridge to Edgemont and continued down the mountain taking out trees in its way, creating a very scary situation.

Currently there is only one way in and one way out of the neighborhood. He is asking for you to avoid this area because it’s dangerous. They are working to determine the best way to fix this landslide and get the roads back open.