Flash flooding devastated parts of the Hudson Valley last month, left many Orange County residents without homes and destroyed local infrastructure. But a critical bridge in Highland Falls that closed due to July's flooding is back open thanks to what state officials are calling a marvel of engineering.

Its reopening, however, also has neighbors wondering how New York’s infrastructure will continue to weather the storms some say are getting more intense.

Ben Marrero said the closure of the Popolopen Bridge, a key span connecting southern Orange County with the lower Hudson Valley, created extraordinary hardships for him, his family and neighbors.

His wife’s commute time quintupled, from one hour to five, after July's storm.

“It's frustrating," he said. "And we don't actually get to see how critical it is for that one bridge. That stopped everything. Everything is backed up everywhere.”

The bridge was one of the biggest pieces of compromised infrastructure from the historic and deadly storms that flooded the mid- and lower Hudson Valley region. It was out of commission from July 9 until Aug. 4, and needed round-the-clock repairs from a team of Department of Transportation engineers.

Service has now been restored for convenience and safety. Just minutes before a press conference to announce the bridge's reopening on Friday, an ambulance carrying a person having a heart attack was among the first vehicles to cross the bridge.

“This is a critical access point," said New York State Department of Transportation Commissioner Marie Therese Dominguez. "It is literally the main, I'll call it a shortcut, for the locals around here. And getting it up and operational was our our goal, and doing that as quickly as possible.”

A recent report from The Road Information Program revealed 10% of New York’s bridges are considered to be in poor shape.

Dominguez said the department is already working on fixes and ensuring they’re climate-resilient, as climate changes makes natural disasters more frequent.

“When we talk about building back better, that's exactly what we mean with our resiliency standards," she said. "We built for a 75-year life span for our bridges, and we look at every single sustainability and resiliency factor that we can from our engineering perspective.”

Now that the bridge is open, repair efforts here will focus on Route 218, which is still severely flood-damaged.