McCaysville Tap Water Stays Under Boil Advisory for Up to Three Weeks as Fannin County Digs Out

Every McCaysville water customer should keep boiling tap water before drinking it, and city officials say that could remain true for two to three weeks. The city's water treatment plant and utility lines took heavy damage in the flash flooding that tore through Fannin County overnight Aug. 1 into Aug. 2, and until repairs bring the system back to full capacity, both a boil water advisory and a conservation request stay in place.

Bottled water is being handed out every day through the drive-through at McCaysville City Hall, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. A Tennessee Valley Authority tractor trailer dropped off thousands of bottles for city officials to distribute on Monday.

What Saturday night did

The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for Fannin County at 12:06 a.m. Aug. 2, with 3 to 4 inches of rain already on the ground and more coming. By the time the storm cleared, more than seven inches had fallen in about eight hours. Roughly 50 homes and businesses were damaged.

Fannin County firefighters pulled 19 people out as water rose. The hardest hit lived along the Toccoa River, where water pushed several feet into houses and shoved cars over the riverbank. In Blue Ridge, a road collapsed with a driver trapped in a car. Crews made a temporary fix and had it open to traffic by Monday. A road in Epworth was still washed out days later, and the county's emergency management agency says Horseshoe Bend Park is closed until further notice because of flood damage.

Nobody was killed. Kids are back in class.

The police department has to move

Flooding in downtown McCaysville reached the police department headquarters. Chief Michael Earley said his department is still in the cleanup phase and that he and his staff have to work out what crime-scene evidence, if any, was destroyed in the building. Moving an operation like that, he said, is a large job.

The City Council met in a special called session at noon Tuesday, Aug. 4, by Zoom. The agenda covered the Aug. 1-2 flooding, the state of emergency, closing city facilities, temporarily relocating the police department, how council meetings will be run during the emergency, and open records requests.

Shop owners are shoveling mud

At Blue Ridge 4X4, owner Cameron Hoyt said alarms went off in the early hours of Sunday morning and officers came out around 1:30 a.m. to tell him the building was secure but underwater. The trouble came from a drainage ditch a few steps from his front door, under Tom Boyd Road, which also washed out a section of the street. Nine years in business, and he had never seen mud like that inside. Boxes of auto parts may be beyond saving.

A few miles north, crews were rebuilding a stretch of Blue Ridge Drive, the main drag through McCaysville. Papa's Pizza sits on it. Owner Bryan Angel, whose shop has been there 40 years, said the entire length of his parking lot washed away, and he intends to stay open anyway.

Others downtown lost inventory outright. Rum Cake Lady owner David Correa said high water damaged the restaurant's walk-in freezer, leaving thousands of dollars in spoiled food to throw out. At Cuckoo's Nest Antiques, owner Anne Williams filled a dumpster with ruined furniture, antiques and collectibles.

A disagreement over why downtown flooded

City officials, including Earley, say inadequate drainage around a highway construction project just outside downtown made things worse, and that construction material washed down and plugged storm drains in the business district.

The Georgia Department of Transportation disputes that. In a statement to local media outlets, the agency said the storm dropped more than seven inches in eight hours, a event with less than a 1% chance of hitting the area in any given year, and that no project or drainage system is built for that. GDOT said drainage across the county was overwhelmed, that debris and sediment moved from many locations, and that State Route 5 reopened after 20 hours of cleanup. The department said it will look at mitigation options going forward.

McCaysville has not said how much the water system repairs will cost or whether the police department's temporary home will be inside city limits. Officials say updates will come as they have them, and the city's advisories stay in force until they announce otherwise.

Keep up with recovery coverage at Blue Ridge Georgia Community Website, and if you know of a road still closed, a shop back open, or a neighbor who needs help, join the conversation in our Community Forum. You can read more alerts and advisories and more public safety stories from around Fannin County.

Header photo: Thomson200 / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)