Georgia's governor declared a state of emergency Monday in the 17 counties hardest hit by flooding. 

Gov. Sonny Perdue's announcement followed three deaths in north Georgia's Douglas County; one death in Gwinnett County; and another in Carroll County, where a 2-year-old child was ripped from his father's arms by fierce floodwaters while the father struggled to hold on to bushes, officials said. CNN affiliate WSB-TV later confirmed a fourth death in Douglas County.

Those counties, near Atlanta, were among the 17 included in the state-of-emergency declaration.

About 100 miles north of Atlanta, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, one person was swept into rushing water and was presumed drowned, said Jeremy Heidt, a spokesman for the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency in Nashville.

Early Tuesday, the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for counties along the Interstate 20 corridor east of the Atlanta area almost to the South Carolina line. Additionally, several counties south of Macon, in central Georgia, were under a flash flood warning.

Much of the rest of central and northern Georgia remained under either flash flood or flood watches. 

Three children missing in Douglas County, west of Atlanta, were found, but their mother was one of the flood's fatalities, said Dena Brummer, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency.

Northwest of downtown Atlanta in Vinings, muddy water rose from the Chattahoochee River and flooded into the parking lot of the high-end restaurant Canoe. The waters rose into businesses, some of which were nearly half full of water. In the parking lot, water almost covered cars.

Down the road in the Buckhead area of Atlanta, near Nancy Creek, multimillion-dollar homes were flooded. New Corvettes, BMWs and Lexuses sat submerged as residents banded together to try to push them out of the rising water.

Fire and rescue crews from throughout northern Georgia -- including boats from Richmond County, more than 100 miles away -- came to the area to conduct rescues.

Two crews, wearing scuba gear with bright lights attached, rowed down the street in Buckhead to check on homeowners. Residents rowed their own boats and canoes down the street, rescuing neighbors and pets from homes.

Fire and rescue officials weren't forcing evacuation but were encouraging it. Some residents said as they saw the waters rising, they began to move their most precious belongings to the second floors of their homes to avoid damage. At least six people were rescued by boat from homes.

Just west of Atlanta, some areas had received as much as 22 inches of rain since last week, CNN meteorologists reported. About 12 of those inches fell in a 12-hour period from Sunday night to Monday morning.

In Cobb County, three men pushed their valuables in a kayak as they waded through the shoulder-high muddy waters. Another two men floated on what looked like air mattresses linked together by rope.

Near Marietta, northwest of Atlanta, a flooded bridge blocked the only road out of a residential area surrounded by a national park and the Chattahoochee River. Two buses picked up elementary schoolchildren Monday morning, but flooding prevented them from picking up older students later, and the buses couldn't return with the first batch in the afternoon, said iReporter Pritam Jaipuriar, who lives there. 

"My first-grader son is staying with a friend of mine," said Jaipuriar, who was unable to go to work Monday. Some ground-level apartments in the area were flooded, but his unit was fine, he said.

The flooding from torrential rains drenching the metropolitan Atlanta area "has to rank as one of the worst," Matt Sena of the Peachtree City, Georgia, National Weather Service office told CNN.

Atlanta's Hartsfield Jackson International Airport has received about 4.5 more inches of rain in five days than it usually would in all of September, he said.

Two of the Georgia fatalities involved people 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.