Tallying the costs of hurricane damage is no novelty in North Carolina. We've been there and done that.

Still, Irene comes along at a particularly vulnerable time. With the economy nationwide still languishing near recession level and the N.C. jobless rate in double figures, the devastation wrought by Irene on its path up the eastern coastline will be challenging to address.

We sympathize with families who lost loved ones - at least seven in North Carolina as of Monday. N.C. Gov. Bev Perdue and other state leaders have rightly pledged aid to the thousands who have been affected to help them and the state recover. Perdue captured the toll when she surveyed the area Monday: "What we've seen has been really, really hard - folks who have lost everything they have. These people are depending on North Carolina to help them stand up their lives again."

Indeed, they are - and state and federal government must resolve to do so.

Yet, as N.C. policymakers begin recovery efforts and provide essential aid, they should take this opportunity to rethink some bad decisions that this storm has illuminated. We're talking about the constant shoring up and rebuilding of N.C. 12, the fragile highway that runs along the Outer Banks.

The horrific view of the highway, breached in six places, should be a wake-up call to lawmakers who have ignored the advice of scientists and others by continually rebuilding the road on that narrow strip of land on Hatteras Island.

When severe storms come, N.C. 12 - the mainland link for seven villages on Hatteras - will get battered and broken. In 2003 after Hurricane Isabel, it took almost two months and $5 million to repair the breaches and reopen the highway.

Irene's breaches are worse, and will likely be more costly to mend.

Geologists argue persuasively that the breaches are part of a natural process - nature opening new inlets to compensate for older ones shoaled over or filled in elsewhere on the banks. They say such breaches should be left alone.

East Carolina University geology professor Stanley R. Riggs said Monday the state's repeated efforts to stabilize the highway only make the island itself more fragile because they interfere with the Outer Banks' tendency to migrate toward the west - retreating on the ocean side and growing on the sound side.

He also said the N.C. Department of Transportation was foolish to proceed a month ago with plans to build a $216 million replacement bridge for the Bonner Bridge over Oregon Inlet at the northern end of Hatteras Island. He called it "a bridge to nowhere" because "between the next storm and the next decade or two, those islands are collapsing."

A coalition of conservation groups on Monday also called for NCDOT to rethink its plan for replacing the Bonner Bridge at the current location. Derb Carter, of the Southern Law Center, called the bridge replacement plan "irresponsible," and urged the state to put "reliability and people's safety first" and build a "safer, less-exposed 'long bridge' that bypasses the most rapidly eroding section of the island, and let the ocean take its inevitable course in the wildlife refuge."

This editorial board has advocated the same thing for years. The state, we've noted, has been fruitlessly trying to preserve N.C. 12 in a hostile environment. Hurricane Irene confirms that once again.

Political pressure won out in 2003 after Isabel and the breaches were repaired. Such pressure from some businesses, developers and property owners has a good chance of winning again. It shouldn't. The road should be rebuilt mostly or entirely with private money, with the understanding the state will not be rebuilding it in the future.

To be sure, policymakers should provide support for the state's multi-million-dollar tourism industry, other businesses and people in these affected areas. But Mother Nature keeps relentlessly sending out the same warning. It's time to listen and change course.