Southeast flood death toll rises to eight; roadways blocked, neighborhoods evacuated

Brian Kates in the New York Daily News: Raging floods killed at least eight people in Georgia, forced evacuations of entire neighborhoods and closed parts of four major interstate highways Tuesday as furious storms pounded the Southeast. The deluge turned placid creeks into roiling rivers, submerging entire neighborhoods and forcing evacuations across the region.

…Most of the Georgia fatalities involved motorists trying to drive through floodwater. A vehicle with one man in it was swept off a road in Douglas County, and a car carrying a woman was swept off a road in Lawrenceville in Gwinnett County, east of Atlanta, Brummer said.

Surging waters ripped apart a west Georgia trailer home about 2 a.m., tearing 2-year-old Preston Slade Crawford from his father's arms and sweeping him away. The boy's body wasn't found until hours later. His parents were rescued as another son, just one year old, clung to his mother's arms.

In Atlanta, stranded motorists scrambled to the tops of their car as waters rose on one of the city's busiest highways. To the northwest, crews in the tiny Georgia town of Trion worked to shore up a levee breached by the Chattooga River and in danger of failing….

A county map of Georgia