Small Georgia town, Tennessee town recover as one community after devastating floods

Survivors are banding together after the devastating floods that hit McCaysville, Georgia and Copperhill, Tennessee.

Channel 2’s Susan Hendricks spoke with residents on both sides of the state line who lost nearly everything.

“It was 1:30 a.m. when they started knocking on my door to evacuate us,” said Destiny Spellins, who lives in Copperhill.

“Swift water came and knocked on my door and said we’re evacuating everybody,” said Jim Burger, who lives in McCaysville.

Burger recorded the rising water on his phone. Spellins watched helplessly on her security camera as floodwaters swallowed her home.

“I see a little stream of water and then a bigger flow of water and then a whole bunch of water so a flash flood before my eyes,” she said. “The water was up to my windows and the camera cut off.”

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Burger watched from his second-floor apartment, filming the flooding before rescuers took him by boat to safety.

“And as I’m walking, the most beautiful thing: Rabun County, Pickens County, every county you can think of, they are coming from everywhere,” he said.

Spellins and her 17-year-old brother returned to find nearly everything destroyed — but their pet frog survived.

Now she’s asking Tennessee for more help, saying this disaster knows no state line.

“McCaysville doesn’t see a state line dividing Copperhill and Tennessee that’s why they evacuated us because we are all one community,” she said.

And like so many flood victims here, Spellins has no flood insurance.

“I have a daughter that works for the insurance company and as shocking as this is there is only probably about 20 to 30 people that actually had any flood insurance at all,” Burger said.

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