The Flood of '10

The past three days have been absolutely amazing. And not in a good way.

We knew last week that we were supposed to have a weekend full of rain and the possibility of severe storms. We were prepared for that. It had actually been our second weekend in a row full of rain and storms. But we had survived and didn't think this weekend would be any bigger than that. And boy were we wrong.

Saturday morning, the rain started. And sometime in the morning, we had our first tornado warning. I always hate when tornadoes come our way while Brian is away at his 2nd job because it means I have to be the calm one trying to keep our children safe and as fear-free as possible. I herded them down the stairs, grabbed the flashlight and my mink blanket and sent the dog down the stairs. We sat down there and I attempted to turn on our little TV down there. What I had forgotten is that it no longer works. There's no cable downstairs so we kept our little antenna TV down there in case of tornadoes. But TV is now digital only which means our little antenna TV no longer works. So I raced upstairs and grabbed my computer. At least the local TV stations are now streaming their broadcasts live online whenever there is severe weather. So we sat down there and watched as the storm headed straight for our house. It's wonderful how precise the radars have become. You can tell down to the street if it's headed for your house. But it's awful when you realize with horror that your exact street is right on track to get the tornado.

So I threw my arms around the kids and started praying. And I prayed and prayed. And Ann Catherine started to become more and more afraid and Will was becoming so confused. He couldn't understand why we were in that basement. But I did my best to calm Ann Catherine down. And I did my best to watch the weatherperson and that radar. And I did my best to keep Simon from licking up the small flood forming in our basement from the water outside. And I prayed and prayed out load. And suddenly I heard my little four year old boy, who has never said a prayer in his life beyond his little recited dinner prayer, suddenly say, "God, Please make the storm go away. I don't want the storm. Please take away the storm." And I couldn't help but smile and feel my heart start to melt. And oddly enough, the storm that, according to radar, was directly over my house, did nothing. I heard a little rain, but there was no wind at all. Honestly, this would be my most heart-warming moment of the entire weekend.

About an hour before Brian was supposed to leave work, I started to hear about the flood waters rising in Franklin. That's nothing unusual. Franklin lies along the Harpeth River, which is always one of the first to flood. But I knew it was bad when I heard that a boat had been called out to rescue people from the fast-food restaurant about three buildings down from where Brian was. Fortunately, my native Tennessean boy knew all the back roads and managed to get home safely. Well, almost home. Less than a mile from our house, he realized that he couldn't get home from there. The small creek just down from our house was now a lake and had overtaken the road leading into our subdivision. It took him a full 15 more minutes before he was able to wind through a neighboring subdivision to get to the front of our subdivision to finally get home.

As the afternoon wore on, we watched the local news channels in horror. The streets of Nashville were flooding. The streets of Franklin were flooding. And people were trying to drive through water, thinking that they were in cars tall enough to tackle the churning, ugly water ahead. And as the news and weather people reported the stories, they began showing the traffic cameras around town. And there we watched a horror story unfold with grief and fear in our hearts. The interstate was flooded. It was down to only the left lane and people were filling up the left lane. And then someone tried to get brave and pass everyone in the flooded right lane. And then his truck started to bob. And we watched as the water filled that final lane and the cars were no longer moving and people were trying to escape through their windows. They jumped out of their cars and tried to climb over the median divider where more traffic was oncoming. The story just unfolded in front of our eyes and we screamed at the TV in chorus with the newscasters as we all yelled at the trucks and semis who were still attempting to get around everyone now caught. And then the worst happened. A small portable from a school nearby broke loose and sailed along the murky brown water, becoming the next "vehicle" to try to pass those cars. It caught on several of the now sideways, bobbing cars and slowly, before our eyes, broke apart.

We knew that our world was instantly changing.

Sunday morning we woke up and found out that our church was flood-damaged and that Sunday School classes were cancelled and the worship service was being held in the gym since the Sanctuary was now flooded with five inches of water. After seeing the creek-turned-lake slowly returning behind our house that morning, though, we decided not to brave trying to get to church.

And then more rain started. And it kept raining. And raining. And raining. And we became obsessed with the news coverage as we watched our world change, foot by foot, inch by inch. I've always been a breaking-news junkie. I could sit all day and watch the big stories. But this was different. I've watched floods with fascination before. But suddenly this involved us. It involved our beloved town. And it involved our friends. We watched as familiar landmarks and streets became submerged. We heard stories of flood-rescue stories and realized that we were listening to stories of streets and subdivisions where friends and co-workers live. And we wanted nothing more than to flee, but were literally trapped. By mid-afternoon, when Brian attempted to get to the grocery store to get food to last for a couple of days, we realized that we were trapped in our subdivision. The lake had formed in our neighbors' backyards and had become so large and with a current so strong that it was now impossible to take the back entrance to our subdivision out. So Brian turned around and discovered that a large hill at the front of the subdivision had created its own large waterlogged area which was impassible. We were safe in our home, but could go nowhere else.

Since then we have watched our hometown fall apart. Our own little town is fine. Some roads were flooded but all the water has since disappeared. But Franklin is submerged. Too many subdivisions full of families we love and have known for years are now under water and their home are damaged or completely destroyed. We have coworkers and friends in the nearby Bellevue area who are either trapped in their homes or also dealing with the complete loss of everything they own. And we have watched with such sadness and horror as we see the river downtown take over the businesses that we love downtown, the hotel we visit for the Christmas lights every year and dream of staying in one day, and the surrounding neighborhoods full of people who likely have little to no insurance and now have no place to go and nothing to their name. And for once, this breaking news story is just amazingly and heart-breakingly too personal.