Trion crews work to clear floodwaters, find body of missing boy

TRION, Ga. -- J.P. McClund, Bandit and Sambo were all ready to go home Tuesday afternoon.

Mr. McClund, 81, his Boston terrier and his mutt all waited impatiently in their Oldsmobile Cutlass, sitting in a lot across from the police tape closing First Street.

"Why do they get to go down there and we don't?" he asked as a Red Cross sport utility vehicle rolled through the barricade in the flood-wracked Chattooga County town. "We live there!"

Mr. McClund and his two dogs are among dozens of Trion residents who were unable to get to their homes more than 24 hours after the Chattooga River jumped its banks.

Emergency officials spent Tuesday afternoon driving street to street, evaluating flood conditions in neighborhoods near the Chattooga River. Residents were not allowed back onto First Street by Tuesday afternoon, but law enforcement officials said most other streets were open. All of the yards on First Street remained flooded.

By midafternoon Tuesday, the Chattooga River appeared to have receded about eight feet from the railroad bridge at Mount Vernon Mills and traffic -- which police blocked Monday -- was flowing over the bridge at Riegel Way.

Officials said they were looking for pumps to push the trapped water back over the levy and into the river and it could be some time before residents were allowed to return.

Mr. McClund said it didn't take this long when waters flooded his house after heavy rains in 1990. He waded back in to check on his stuff the next day, he said.

"This time they won't let you back in there," he said.

Last night, while Mr. McClund slept in his son's home a few miles away on drier ground, house rules kept Bandit and Sambo -- normally house dogs -- outside.

He said his major concern was his floors and rugs, which he expected to be soaked by the mucky floodwater.

"I'll probably have to tear them out," he said.

First Street resident Max Ramirez said his family left home about 10 a.m. Monday after grabbing a few belongings. They have not been able to return to the house, he said, but they can see it by standing on a nearby hill.

"It looks like a river," said his daughter Shyra Diaz, who was translating Mr. Ramirez's Spanish.

"It looked like one of these," she said, pointing to the Chattooga River, "but with houses in the middle."

Trevor Gilreath was worried about the photos and other memories in his late mother's home.

"I got the lawn mower out from under the house and that was it," he said.

Residents who were allowed to return found plenty of work to do.

Charles Frady, an elder at Trion Presbyterian Church, was pumping water out of four Sunday school rooms on the church's first floor.

"It's been a long two days," he said, yelling over the roar of the pump and standing ankle deep in water.

He estimated repairs would cost the church $15,000 -- and the church was not insured because it lies in a flood plain.

"We can make it," he said. "We'll be all right."

Mary Ann Hills, who lives in apartments near the river, came back to find water filling the basement and rising to her ankles on the first story.

"I cried all night," she said.

On Tuesday, a grungy layer of mud and sewage covered the floor and soaked the presents from her son Michael's birthday party on Saturday.

"All we're going to do is pack up and do what we can do," she said.