WWQP Bulletin Board Chat

Nashville Flood

Sandy - We received an unprecedented 16" of rain in 36 hours. Too much rain came down too fast on too much developed land. That's the bottom line. My sister who lives 6 or 7 miles up the road got 19" in 36 hours.

Too many homes and industrial buildings have been built too close to the river, and Nashville is a large city (but nothing like Toronto) with buildings, roads and parking lots, so the water has nowhere to go but into creeks & rivers.

Interstate 40 was flooded in three places, on the west side of Nashville, from Saturday until this morning. It was literally shut down between Nashville and the Tennessee River.

Local news today reported on a man in a private airplane who flew to Nashville, had no clue about our flood, he was planning to land at Cornelia Fort Airpark (private planes only) and didn't realize it was under eight feet of water, and had no idea where to go, radioed for help.

Our local newspaper updates at least daily with a very good photo galleries:
http://www.tennessean.com/


Well-known landmarks with several feet of water in them:
--Titans football stadium
--Indoor arena downtown where rock concerts and NHL hockey games are held, to name a few activities
--New Schermorhorn Symphony Hall
--Country Music Hall of Fame
--Opryland Hotel (where AQS has had a show in Aug/Sept for many years)
--Opry Mills Outlet Mall (next door to OH)
--Grand Old Opry House
--2nd Avenue at Broadway - buildings & restuarants, popular tourist spot

The Cumberland River is expected to crest overnight at 52.5 feet. Most of the drinking water supply plants are flooded and we are at extremely high risk of having no water to drink - or use - for a long time, including our own suburb city and subdivision.

In Williamson County, the Harpeth River is flooded worse than ever seen before, hundreds of homes flooded here in Franklin.

This is equal to, if not worse, than the Atlanta flood this past September, which got national press coverage. However, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and carbomb in NYC have overshadowed our disaster.

We had a beautiful day here, low humidity and nice easy breeze. I got our garage almost dried out. Snoopy dance.

posted by Doris W. in TN @ 9:48 PM