Karen McKay, manager at Willowbrook Equestrian Center in Villa Rica, could hardly absorb the impact of what happened as she surveyed once green pastures that are now filled with sand, mud and uprooted plants. The fences meant to corral the horses lay broken or missing.

“They found this flooding, but nowhere near this extent in ‘80, and an older gentleman down the road said it’s been a good 80 years before that and he’d never seen it as bad as it was in 1980 and this is much worse, much worse,” McKay said. “A neighbor that she talked to, somebody, said it was probably 70 mile per hour water coming through here.”

The ranch, which was built in 1983 or 1984, was built on a flood plain but had not flooded in more than 20 years.

Yesterday morning when McKay arrived at the barn, she had to walk through water up to the top of her legs to check on the nine horses housed in the barn. Only six remained. Three, including her own horse, were carried off by the flood waters which, judging by water marks on the walls, had been up much higher, at least 5 feet high.

“We found one (horse) alive on the other side of the creek about a half-mile down, grazing grass,” McKay said.

A second horse, which belonged to a 13-year-old girl, was found dead in the water, its legs tangled up in debris. McKay’s horse, a white horse with tan speckles and a gray mane and tail, is still missing.

Friends and boarders of the horse ranch searched the pasture for equipment and tack. McKay pulled a bridle off one of the fence posts as she returned to the barn. The bridle apparently had been washed out of the barn and got caught on the fence during the flood. One of the stable doors is propped against a fence post where it came to rest after flood waters ripped it off the barn. Another is gone.

Tuesday afternoon, the creek that runs along the property was still running higher than its typical 18 to 24 inches, but it had dropped probably 8 feet into the ravine where it usually flows. The power of Monday’s raging floodwaters may not have been visible in the creek bed, but the evidence was strewn all along its banks 8 feet up. Uprooted trees and bushes along with tree stumps left after the water ripped the tree down lined the banks.

Despite the devastation, McKay knew how lucky they all were when she pointed out a battered mobile home wedged in a clump of trees about 100 yards from the barn. The trailer, where Terry Olsen lived, was picked up by the raging waters and carried to the trees, where Olsen managed to escape and spend the rest of the night.

Olsen declined to be interviewed about his experience, but let McKay tell his story.

Sunday night, as the rain fell on his trailer behind a barn next to the stables, Olsen slept on his couch, his dog on the floor beside him. Early that morning, his dog woke him by jumping on him and to his surprise the dog was wet. He put his feet down and found water up to his calves. Then he felt the trailer shift and knew he was in trouble.

“He said it just came up so fast,” McKay said. “He finally broke out a window and water started rushing inside, so he broke out a window on the back side and the water just started draining out.”

He managed to get his dog out the window and was able to escape when he caught a tree branch and pulled himself out of the home. He spent the rest of the night in the tree and was found the next morning by neighbors cold and wet.

“The neighbor came down to feed the horses,” McKay said. “They were worried about Terry being down here all by himself.”

The dog was also found cold and wet, but alive. Amidst all the destruction, the ranch had its miracles, too.