Image shows roller coaster during 2009 flooding in Georgia | Fact check

A Sept. 28 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows a wooden roller coaster partially submerged in brown floodwater.
“6 FLAGS OVER GEORGIA FRIDAY AM,” reads text above the image.
The post was shared more than 100 times in five days.
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The image is miscaptioned. It shows flooding in 2009 at a Six Flags amusement park in Georgia. It has no connection to Hurricane Helene.
Hurricane Helene made landfall Sept. 26 near Perry, Florida, and moved north, leaving behind extensive flooding, power outages and property damage in multiple states. The death toll was 184 as of Oct. 3, and more than a million people remained without power in the region.
However, the image in the post doesn’t show flooding caused by Hurricane Helene. Rather, it’s from 2009 and shows flooding at Six Flags Over Georgia, an amusement park near Atlanta.
After days of prolonged rainfall, “catastrophic flooding” swept across the Atlanta area in September 2009, according to the National Weather Service. At one point, an estimated 10 to 20 inches of rain fell in less than 24 hours, leading to historic flash flooding. The flooding caused an estimated $500 million in property damage, affecting more than 20,000 homes, businesses and other buildings.
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Atlanta magazine published the same image in 2017 with a description that says it’s from 2009 and shows “much of the park … submerged when record rainfall (resulted) in massive floods across the metro area.” In 2019, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution published two different images of the same amusement park inundated with floodwater as part of an article looking back at the flooding a decade later.
Six Flags Over Georgia was closed Sept. 27 “due to the effects of Hurricane Helene,” but opened again Sept. 28, though several rides remained closed, according to posts on its Facebook page.
USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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