Cleanup continues in McCaysville following historic flood

Tanya, let's move forward to McKaysville, another story that we're paying attention to, and our photographer is live on scene. That's right. Yes, in that area. Yeah, so, you know, the cleanup continues in that area. We're going to continue to follow that story as business owners, homeowners try to clean up and just get back to normal, and it's going to take a while. We are featuring different stories every day. Right now, we have Jim Zorn over in the Copper Hill area, which is right across the state line. And I want to make sure that everybody knows, earlier we received a statement from the mayor, which basically they continue to say it's McKaysville and Copper Hill. It's a joint recovery effort. Both of them are united as they both try to recover. and uh and move on from you know the what happened last week the flooding but we are able to go live right now with photographer Jim Zorn as he is at a business that is cleaning up this morning um and and well throughout the afternoon as well over in the Copper Hill area Jim, can you hear us Yeah I can. I'm right in front of Barefoot and Blue Ridge Soap Company and when we were out here yesterday we talked to the owner, shared footage with Fox 5 of their store filling up. They are one of those Copper Hill Tennessee businesses because the way that the city sets up here is McKaysville's got a lot more residential there's there's definitely a business component to it but the majority of the area that is commercial is Copperhill and you can see how they actually have like a very legit downtown there's Mexican restaurants Cuban restaurants bakeries soap makers like Blue Ridge Soap Company I'm sorry, Barefoot in Blue Ridge Soap Company, which the owner will be talking with us for the next hour as well. Like this restaurant, I talked to the owner not that long ago. They're a local person. They have a lot of people coming out to support them. They grew up here. But yeah, this restaurant is completely torn down to the studs. And you can see that the streets are just absolutely covered in mud still over here. They're starting to try to clean that up. Um, but it is, it's a process that's, it's dusty and dirty and every time somebody comes through here, they kick it up again. So, um, yeah, really out here, it's a... Everybody from the region, people coming from all over the place up here to help support local businesses. People are setting up GoFundMe accounts to help keep them afloat. This barefoot in Blue Ridge Soap Company literally the week before just got voted best of Tennessee for the soap and kind of beauty products. And she literally, the wife of the owner, one of the owners, it's a husband and wife. The wife group that own it, they literally just won that right before this and their store is at this point completely gutted. But the streets are alive with people donating time and trying to help get this place a little bit back to where it can be at this point. And Jim, you've been there since pretty much the day, the night after, the day after the the flooding occurred. What is the progress that you're seeing since that point? Well the good thing is, is Yeah, yeah. From being here since Thursday, you can see that a lot of the town is coming out to help each other. They're working fast to get things down so that they're safe. Because when you see that there's piles of wood and nails and all the debris that could end up in the streets or be affecting people around here, it's just not safe. And so they're getting it to where it looks more like it is in the store. Or, I don't know, And I'll show you right now, I'll go in here, but it's completely gutted. This is literally how they're trying to get the stores around here, because the water line came up so high. I mean you can see it where they had to tear it out and a lot of these buildings are old and so they are going to mold and they have a lot of stuff in the walls that they're going to have to take out and it's just it's really sad but also they they have to mitigate all this stuff before they can even start to rebuild the window broke here so There's just a lot going on out here and it seems like it's all hands on deck from all the locals and people volunteering their time to come up. There's groups and by the way this IGA is literally the only grocery store and it is gone. Like it was flooded. So it's just not a lot that they're going to need a lot of time to bounce back, but this is a good start. And they got a lot of people on site to help them out and try to get some of this stuff done. All right. Well, thank you so much. I know you'll have the live interview a little later. Jasmine, do you have any questions for Jim while he's out there? No, no questions for him, but just taking a look at the video that he was showing us or this live picture that he was showing us. And, you know, we were able to speak with the company CEO who says that the water burst through the glass, flooding this area, flooding that business. So, you know, my thoughts and prayers are with that company because I know there's a lot. That organizations and that the business has to put into this, a lot of money is going to cost them tens of thousands of dollars to repair their shop. So they're losing business and having to dish out some money to repair their facility. But of course, like you said, Tanya, we'll continue to follow these businesses out there. I know that several organizations as well are coming together to help areas like this. Barefoot and Blue Ridge, which is in Tennessee, and also just helping the North Georgia area as well. Right, and I did want to mention real quick, Jasmine, that Fannin County, we did get a release, an update from them. Schools will resume tomorrow, normal schedule in Fannin County, so that's a quick update on that. All right. Well, some good news there for the kids. They're able to go back to school tomorrow. And McKaysville, we are hearing a lot of progress in that area. So glad to hear all that.