We had no idea when we left for Dalton, Ga., on Saturday morning what would be in store for us when we returned home the next day. First we dropped our dogs off at A Bark Above in Inglewood at about 10:30am; at that point it was already raining pretty steadily, but not so bad that we couldn’t begin our trip down the road. The rain actually intensified as we drove along past Franklin and toward Murfreesboro, but once we got about 45 miles down I-24 the storm stopped abruptly. We filed it away in memory and got about the business of enjoying our trip to Dalton.
That evening, though, we began to get messages from friends about the flooding in Nashville. When we got up in the morning we learned that the interstates had been closed at various points and that the forecast was calling for more rain throughout the day. After considering our options we decided to try to make it home, with the option of staying in a hotel for the evening if we weren’t able to get back to the house. We stopped in Chattanooga to gas up and eat some lunch, and the messages from home were that things were actually getting worse. The whole thing felt like a surreal joke, especially since the drive was rainless and generally uneventful until we were 45 miles outside of the city. At that point we could see dark skies ahead and the wind picked up. The rain began coming down when we passed Murfreesboro. Within a few miles of the first drops we had to slow down to 40 miles per hour on the Interstate, and once we reached Hickory Hollow Parkway the rain was so heavy that we had to take the exit and stop in a hotel parking lot to see if we could wait out the rain.
While there we were able to get online and check out the TDOT SmartWay site. All the major highways were colored in blue to indicate that they were flooded, but some of the side roads appeared to be open so we planned out a route to make it home. We got about a mile down Hickory Hollow before we reached Mill Creek and saw signs of pretty bad damage to the land and local homes and businesses. A Metro police officer had the area blocked off; we asked him if there were any routes open to help us get back to East Nashville and he suggested that we take Bell Road, which he had heard was open and passable by that point. We took his advice, though not without some trepidation; on Saturday one person died there when his vehicle was caught in flood waters.
Antioch Middle School's football field early Sunday afternoon
Even a few inches of water can be too much to drive through in these conditions.
After driving past underwater football fields and several other roads blocked off by Metro police, we managed to make our way to Nolensville Pike. The road was not only open, but full of people shopping and going to fast food restaurants. Frighteningly enough, most folks were still driving like they would in normal conditions, even though heavy streams of water took up half the right lane in many spots and snapped utility poles and blacked-out stoplights gave plenty of indication that conditions were anything but normal. Eventually we made it back to an open stretch of I-40, which led us back to the Shelby Avenue exit and then the safety of home. We picked the dogs up and saw some streams above their normal capacity up in Inglewood, but there was nothing like what we saw on the way back home.
This normally placid creek near Maplewood High School flooded on Sunday.
Last night at 9pm the local media were still going strong with their coverage of the flood. We looked for any sign that the national news media was paying any attention to our city’s plight, but the signals were far from encouraging. CNN was talking about Ford Motor Company’s profits and a car bomb in Times Square. Headline News featured Nancy Grace taking calls from people who had an opinion about Sandra Bullock adopting as a single mother. FOX News had Geraldo Rivera talking about the new immigration law in Arizona. MSNBC featured a documentary about a high school girl who was murdered several years ago. ABC News Now was talking to a priest about South Park and Islam.
Only the Weather Channel had an inkling of what was going on here – and even then the images and information coming out of Nashville were relegated to a split-screen with “V2: Target Tornado,” the regularly scheduled programming. A wastewater treatment plant was submerged, there were more than 600 water rescues in a single day in our landlocked state, people were swept away in their cars and died, and all the situation merited on a channel dedicated to weather was a sidebar with an info ticker showing brief headlines about the state government operating under an effective state of emergency. It seemed at the time like the only thing that could get anyone to pay real attention to Nashville would be for Pat Robertson to say that this historic flood was the result of a deal that Andrew Jackson made with the Devil, pissing off people around the country and raising enough awareness about the situation in Nashville that we could start getting some assistance.
Today the word is getting out a bit more, but in general, Americans still know more about Sandra Bullock’s adoption than they do about Music City drowning. It’ll probably stay that way for at least another day or two. So while we wait to see the extent of the damage once the waters recede later in the week and figure out what we’ll have to do to help one another recover, please, be safe out there. Don’t drive through town any more than is absolutely necessary, and if you do decide to get out and drive, please, don’t try to be a hero and cross any flooded streets. Conserve water at home so the people who need it most will have it. And when it’s time to start picking up the pieces, do what you can to help your neighbors. Whether it’s time, money or physical labor, donate what you can – it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to count on much help from the outside anytime soon.
You can check up with Nashvillest’s open thread for the latest info, and you can go here to volunteer with Hands On Nashville, the mayor’s office for emergency volunteer services. And if you know anyone outside the area, spread the word about what’s going on down here.
