Kemp issues emergency order after North Georgia flood surge

It's a day of cleanup in McCaysville where flooding left the North Georgia community devastated. Governor Kemp has declared a state of emergency and a curfew is now in place. More than 80 people had to be rescued after the Toccoa River rose 16 feet in 12 hours. Good day's Mark Teichner joins us live with more. Good morning, Mark. Yeah, good morning, guys. 50 of those people right here in McCaysville as a result of that river rescues that they were doing, we are standing in front of The Toccoa River right now, obviously it has gone way down Where we're standing at this moment, 24 hours ago we would have been under an awful lot of water. You can see some of the damage and debris that has been snagged up by the main bridge here in town as a result of this flooding. The Toccoa River rose some 16 feet in a matter of hours when this rainstorm came through early yesterday morning and left all of downtown. McCaysville underwater as a result of that a number of folks got stranded and stuck in their home, and that's why they had to do those rescues by boat. We did manage to talk with one of the folks who had that happen to them We saw some of those take place yesterday morning when we were here. Those people looked basically shell-shocked. from what they had undergone and then the water finally receded and when it went down that's when we realized all of the damage that had been done to this community. You've got a number of businesses that are simply destroyed based on all of the water damage and mud and all the other things that they're going to have to try to clean up here and making matters even worse the fact that this is the third flood that this town here on the Georgia Tennessee border has Endured just this year In fact, in August they had a pretty bad one and that one They just were able to reopen a number of these businesses a week ago And then this happens this community means a lot to me and we experienced a flash flood three months ago and we just got back out on our feet and some of our buildings were starting to open back up and People's been actively cleaning up for the past three months and then we get hit again Got a long road ahead of us They certainly do. Now, the good news is the governor has declared a state of emergency. Hopefully, that will bring some relief and some assistance in that cleaning up process. We can tell you that they're also going to be handing out bottled water today, clean water The reason for that is the nearby water treatment plant does Flooded, so there's a boil water advisory as we speak and there still remains this curfew in town that will stay in place until 6 o'clock this morning Reporting live from McCaysville I'm Mark Teichner for Good Day Atlanta. All right, thank you so much, Mark, for those details.