Asheville – Garner Engineering specializes in dam repair, particularly for “small dams that are classified as high hazard.” Principal Engineer John Garner said that as an outgrowth, they’ve, “done a lot with bridges, retaining walls, and landslide repairs.” It would seem they’d be busy following Hurricane Helene.
Garner said he and the rest of the regional civil engineering community with which he has been sharing notes really haven’t seen a lot of dam damage, outside of Lake Lure. He is staying busy with repairing landslides and bridges, and this has affected a lot of people.
The USGS (United States Geological Service), in collaboration with other agencies and GPS businesses, has an online map that posts counts and locations of landslides caused by Hurricane Helene. More are being found as debris is removed. Updating every few minutes, the current count is 2,004.

“The damage the civil engineering community, professionally, is seeing associated with landslides and slope failure is unprecedented,” said Garner. It might not surprise a California engineer, but Garner said that even the people who make North Carolina’s landslide probability maps were “astounded” at the extent of some of the damage. He said the mappers did a good job locating risks; the magnitude of damage was a different matter.
He told of working in Craigtown. It’s a small family community near Fairview that was built along Flat Creek and its tributaries about 75 years ago. It was hit by a landslide that killed 11. Survivors want to build it back because it’s the home of their legacy and memories.
Garner said the typical landslide they’re working on can be hundreds of feet long; one is about 800 feet long. It is not unusual for earth to be destabilized and move downhill for thousands of feet. “These are large-scale land movements, not your backyard gully,” said Garner.
Asked how he repaired slopes, Garner said, “All of the above. With each repair, we have to look at the total situation and figure out what failed and how to fix it.”
He told how a lot of washouts were along mountain roads. When they were being built, rock and soil were removed from the upslope side and used as fill on the downslope to level the roads. When the hurricane hit, the fill dirt washed out. Now, Garner Engineering is having to design new slopes before roads can be rebuilt.
This involves removing all the saturated soil and replacing it with dry soil. Then, they roll geogrid on top. Geogrid is like thick, polymeric, chain-link fencing that holds the dirt in place. They repeat the process layer after layer, and Garner says this is not inexpensive.
In other places, if space is tight and bedrock is accessible, they can pour concrete and anchor a foundation with rebar. Then, they can build a small retaining wall on top of that.
Everybody’s seen the photos of washed-out interstate bridges. Hurricane-damaged bridges proliferate, as is well known by people who were stranded. Garner describes the damages as either from scouring beneath that broke the bridges off their abutments or scouring from above that eroded the land on either side of the bridge.
Garner Engineering’s strategy for building bridges back better typically involves reconstructing abutments to give the new bridges a wider span so they can withstand greater fluctuations in river volumes.
Garner isn’t working on government- or institution-scale projects. Rather, his clients are private parties. That has made things challenging, as most private parties can’t afford sustainable repairs for the unprecedented damages they’ve incurred.
He therefore spends a lot of time trying to find solid solutions that will be affordable. He laughed when asked what some of these are. As an engineer, it is his job to innovate systems for unique situations. One cost-cutting idea he shared, though, was to use repurposed steel or spare lumber.
Garner Engineering employs three engineers, one geologist, and several engineering technicians. They design the solutions, and then they can refer the property owner to some of the trusted construction firms with which they’ve built relationships. Garner said most homeowners with whom they’re working have no experience contracting with, for example, heavy equipment operators.
Garner is taking on new clients. “We’re taking calls all the time, and we try to help as many people as we can.” He can be contacted through his website, garner-eng.com. If he doesn’t have the resources available to complete a particular project, he can at least refer people to an organization that specializes in what they need.