Florida transportation officials

will start repairing hurricane-damaged State Road A1A in Flagler Beach this week.

Temporary repair of State Road A1A in Flagler Beach starts this week, with a 45-day deadline to get traffic moving again along a stretch wrecked by Hurricane Matthew earlier this month

The storm ripped apart the northbound lane of the coasthugging highway, leaving craters and risk of further collapse.

The nearly $4 million patchwork will span 1.3 miles between South Ninth Street and South 22nd Street, according to Florida Department of Transportation.

DOT spokesman Steve Olson said a new lane will be paved just west of the battered road. That lane will serve southbound traffic, while the mostly intact southbound land will carry northbound traffic. Rock will be used to solidify areas that collapsed.

After Matthew’s Oct. 7 brush along Florida, residents of the small Flagler County city said they had predicted a storm would cause major damage; Atlantic Ocean surf has gotten much closer to the road in recent years.

An average of nearly 10,000 cars daily use the road, which leads north to St. Augustine and south to Ormond Beach.

Motorists have had to detour along South Central Avenue, a neighborhood street just west of the damaged section.

DOT has no schedule yet for permanent construction, which could cost $35 million, according to a preliminary estimate made without a completed design.

“Restoring north-south traffic on A1A is the No. 1 priority in the state for FDOT, and we have been working diligently since the storm passed to assess what needed to be done,” Jim Boxold, agency secretary, said last week.