STATE OF EMERGENCY AS AREA HIT WITH HEAVY RAIN, FLOODING

Heavy rain and its accompanying floodwaters continued to deluge the Chattanooga area Saturday, prompting a statewide emergency declaration, shutting down various roadways, necessitating voluntary evacuations and rescues in some areas, and even resulting in a mudslide that flattened a Subway restaurant.

No serious injuries or deaths were reported by responding agencies Saturday night, but several near-misses highlighted the seriousness of the situation.

A mudslide claimed the Subway restaurant around 9:30 a.m. on Signal Mountain Road. Luckily, while the eatery normally opens for breakfast at 8 a.m. each day, the business’ owner, Owen Megahee, had closed its doors around noon Friday after a tree fell on an employee’s car.

“I saw part of the hill trying to come down, so I was like, ‘Let’s get everybody out of here,’” he said.

Officials with the Chattanooga Fire Department said his decision potentially saved lives.

“If they had it open, and employees and customers had been in there, we’d be talking about something much more serious,” fire department spokesman Bruce Garner said. “People could have been hurt or killed for sure.”

Megahee said knowing his decision potentially saved lives was overwhelming.

“It’s crazy to think about,” he said.

Madison Davis, whose father owns the business next door, Shuford’s Smokehouse, said she was working when she heard the land give way.

“That was the wildest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” she said. “It was scary. It happened so fast … just, all of a sudden. The whole thing just fell.

The CO2 tank blew, the wire was alive, and it was insane.”

The fire department issued a notice prohibiting occupancy of the smokehouse until the land is deemed stable.

“We hate to give a business bad news like that. We don’t like to have any negative impact on a business, but this is about life safety. That’s why we’re advising to close it down today,” Garner said.

Davis said the business is closed to the public, but they had a number of catering jobs scheduled Saturday that they were trying to figure out how to meet.

In the meantime, Chattanooga building inspector and officials with Hamilton County’s engineering department were inspecting the hillside to determine whether other businesses and homes needed to be evacuated.

And Signal Mountain Road will remain limited to just two lanes in that area until officials deem the area stable again.

“The ground is just so saturated at this point, it’s so unstable and it just flows downhill,” Allan Diegan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Morristown, Tennessee, said of the mudslide.

In addition to the mudslide, Diegan said the weather service has received reports of roads flooded or closed across East Tennessee because of rain over the past week.

He said the warm front that brought the rain had pushed north of Chattanooga, so the area was expected to see a break from rain in the afternoon. But a cold front was expected to move in around 9 p.m. Saturday with the potential to bring between 0.2 and 0.4 inches of rain.

Sometime around noon Saturday, rescue workers pulled a family of three, including an infant, from a Cold Creek Road home in the Carlton Valley community after rising floodwaters prevented them from leaving the house, which sits next to the Collins River.

“The river rose quicker than they anticipated and they just weren’t able to get out,” said Grundy County Sheriff Clint Shrum. “Beersheba Springs Fire/Rescue deployed their boat and went and got ‘em, so they’re in a safe place.”

Shrum said the water had not yet reached the family’s home, but rescuers had to traverse waters about 6 or 7 feet deep to get to them.

A Facebook post by a woman named Shea Austin reported that hers was the family that needed rescuing Saturday.

“For everyone wondering we are safe,” the post reads. “This was me and Joseph and our 3 month old baby Ryver. We are safe thanks to the rescue squad and are staying on the mountain. Thank you everyone who helped us!”

The sheriff added that, so far, no other people in the area had been in need of similar help.

“So far, so good,” he said. “We’re really just concerned about the front we have moving in this afternoon. So, we’re gonna monitor that real close and see what happens.”

He said that some families had voluntarily evacuated the area, where water rose quickly due to ongoing rainstorms.

“There’s not a mandatory evacuation [going on] right now,” Shrum said. “But some folks have voluntarily left that area, and it’s closed off. Highway 56 that runs through there, it’s completely flooded. We’ve just asked people to stay there until the water’s gone down. Hopefully, it’ll go down enough that this next batch of showers won’t cause as much trouble as we’ve had today. But we are concerned about it.”

Another notable Saturday morning rescue ended up being of the bittersweet variety. Two people riding in a vehicle on Middle Valley Road near Soddy-Daisy became stranded in high water and called for a tow truck, but when Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office deputies arrived to lend a helping hand, they reportedly learned that the vehicle and its tag had both been reported stolen. The two motorists, a man and a woman, were arrested and charges are pending, according to sheriff’s office spokesman Matt Lea.

Early Saturday morning, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency declared a state of emergency in response to the ongoing rising floodwaters and potential for further severe weather Saturday evening.

“Our departments and agencies are monitoring the ongoing weather developments in our state and they are coordinating to be fully prepared,” reads the Saturday afternoon release from Gov. Bill Lee.

TEMA was working with state and local officials through the State Emergency Operations Center in Nashville to monitor the weather situation, stay in touch with key information sources such as the National Weather Service and U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers, to address any local need requests, the release states.

As a result of the emergency declaration, Lee cut short a National Governor’s Association trip to Washington, D.C., to better monitor the situation.

“Everyone should pay close attention to weather forecasts today and have multiple ways to receive weather watches and warnings,” reads a statement from TEMA Director Patrick Sheehan. “Those who may have experienced any storm or flooding damage already should contact their county emergency management agencies to report issues, contact their insurance agencies, and keep track of any repairs they make.”