Floyd County seeks disaster assistance for Cave Spring
♦ Most businesses should resume normal hours Saturday.
Floyd County Commission Chair Rhonda Wallace signed an emergency declaration in the aftermath of the flooding in Cave Spring on Wednesday and Thursday.
The order states that emergency circumstances exist requiring “extraordinary and immediate corrective acts for the protection of the health and safety of the citizens of Floyd County and Cave Spring.”
Rome-Floyd County Emergency Management Agency Director Tim Herrington said the disaster declaration is the first step toward possibly receiving state emergency financial assistance for the cleanup and recovery.
“That’s not saying there is any funding available, but we’re going to submit the numbers to the state,” Herrington said.
He said the threshold dollar value for being eligible for assistance is $348,667.54 but stressed that there was no guarantee that funds would be available even if that figure is met.
Officials from the tax assessor’s office did not have a final figure late Friday.
Herrington and Georgia Emergency Management District Six official Tim Reeve were in Cave Spring Friday with a team from the Floyd County Tax Assessors office surveying the damage and trying to put a dollar figure on the losses and recovery effort.
Herrington said the Red Cross did provide financial assistance to a couple of families displaced Thursday night who had to stay in a motel. Floyd County Manager Jamie McCord said he was aware of a number of other families who left their homes but spent the night with family or friends.
The 17 residents of a group home on River Street were encouraged to leave their building at one point Thursday evening.
However, McCord said the administrative staff felt like the water was starting to recede and none of the residents ultimately had to move.
“Several of the buildings down here did sustain minor to moderate issues with the water being inside the buildings and underneath,” Herrington said.
Cave Spring Downtown Development Authority Chairman Rip Montgomery said all of the merchants should be open for business on a normal schedule Saturday.
A number of the antique dealers who rent space in Montgomery’s Antiques on the Square were on hand with industrial blowers drying out their booth space Friday after four to five inches of water infiltrated the building.
A number of the businesses closed Friday or opened a little later than normal.
LaBron Morgan, water superintendent in Cave Spring, said the wastewater treatment plant handled more than three times its permitted capacity Wednes- day and Thursday.
The wastewater plant is permitted to handle 220,000 gallons a day however the Wednesday through Thursday cycle pumped 790,000 gallons and the Thursday through Friday unit went even higher, to 800,000 gallons.
“We had no spills. It wasn’t a sewer thing,” Morgan said of the flooding downtown. “We had no failures in mechanics, it all pumped as designed.”
Morgan said the EPD understands the condition of the Cave Spring system, which is being upgraded in part with special purpose, local option sales tax funds.
Since the system was able to function without any spills, he’s not anticipating any penalties from the EPD for exceeding its permits.