EXTRA- THE NEWS FROM GEORGIA

And here is my buddy from Georgia, just like I figured. This guy was right in the thick of it and I trust him a lot. He is a prepper and is okay, last I heard. May God bless him.

Hi Michael,
Hope you are drying out a little bit there. You've probably seen the pictures of Six Flags Over Georgia. When the river flooded the park it also came on up on to I20 and flooded it. Right now there is no way out of our county. Every road has at least one bridge over a flooded creek or river. Feels a little odd but I really have no where to go.

We had at least 10 people drown when their cars either washed off the roadway or they drove in to deep water. Since we got 18 inches of rain in less than 24 hours there was a lot of swift water and no boats equipped to save people. Now they've got some boats and have evacuated quite a few people to shelters.

Here at the home place I knew it was getting bad when the scanner reported the first bridge out. I got out the bathtub buddy and filled it and brought up drinking water and stuff from the stores downstairs. We did get flooded in the basement but everything is sitting up on wooden platforms so nothing was hurt so far.

Lots of neighborhoods where the houses are completely under water. The state was not ready in any size, shape or form to deal with this kind of event. I don't remember Georgia every getting flooded like this. While it's overcast today they are expecting more storms before the weekend. There is no where for the water to run off and ground is saturated.

Several good lessons were learned from this event. If people had planned to get the heck out of Dodge, unless they left way ahead of the storm, they would not have made it to the county. Red Cross has opened up shelters but you can't take your guns or anything else in. They still aren't telling what they are doing with the pets. Our emergency services was already stretched thin due to budget cutbacks. Those are some tough folks, they worked 24 to 30 hours continuous with no breaks. They couldn't keep up the pace and have no backups so now we have very little emergency service available.

With the washing out of bridges came the breaking of major water lines. We are under a boil water advisory but it doesn't matter since there is no running water. With no running water the fire department has no fire hydrants they can pull from. Quite a few houses have burned down to the water line with the fire truck either stuck in mud or with no water lines to hook to all they can do is watch them burn. Heard one house go and sounded like a lot of propane tanks and ammo burning off. Folks had probably never used their came stove before and tried it in the dark is my best guess. We lost power but only for a few hours. There are still thousands without power in the outlying areas.

I've preached the gospel of being prepared and depending on yourself and helping your neighbor but it seems to have fallen on deaf ears. I've taken bottled drinking water and put cases on peoples front porches because they won't answer the door or the ones that do take what is offered like they were entitled to it. People are funny and I don't maintain a whole lot of hope for most folks if things get worse.

In my last note to you I had told you that Dad had said his grave needed tending. It did. I did the weeding and put out new flowers and picked up all the trash and junk and he hasn't been back since so I guess everything is OK now. Last visit he said he had told me everything I needed to know and it was up to me to do what was right so I guess he won't be visiting again.
Keep on shelling those beans and putting up the peppers. It's going to be nice in your kitchen come winter time.

Take care,
Cliff in Georgia