The Nashville Tribute Band: Tennessee Flooding

The following photos and text are taken from an email from Jason Deere

Hey guys,

Below is an e-mail that Sonja sent out to her family last night that may have some interesting stories in it. I thought I'd sent some picks too. Last night J Davis came sprinting into our bedroom and jumped in bed with us. Sonja whispered, "Are you ok? Bad dream?" He said, "Yes. There was this water wescue boat, and I was the one being wescued, and the fireman fell in the water and I got stinged by an electric eel." Poor kid. We volunteered all day yesterday. So much more to do. The Cumberland River finally crested at over 51 feet. If you know Nashville, downtown is flooded up to 4th ave. Titan's Stadium is flooded. Opryland Hotel, Opry Mills Mall, the Grand Ole Opry...completely flooded. Downtown Franklin...flooded anywhere near the river. Neighborhood after neighborhood...under water. The Sonic on Hillsboro Road...water up to the middle of the order signs. Nuts. It's nuts all over town...everywhere.

Jason

Dear family,
We have had the most unbelievable weekend. It has been scary, devestating and historical. It is mostly unbelievable because we always get a little flooding with heavy rains but NEVER this. It also only rained about 12 hours before serious things started happening. It rained about 36 hours, and half of those hours were seriuos storms with tornadoes.

So our near death experience happened Saturday night. We were trying to get home from Monte and Gales. Right behind us were a long string of tornadic storms. Usually with severe storms the radar on the news show yellow or red.... these counties were BLACK!... Black = GET IN YOUR SAFE AREA. Unfortunately we were on the road in the middle of the night can't see the skies to see exactly where the storm is ..... but we felt good, we felt like we were just outrunning it (yes like Twister) until we get into frankin and hit all of the road blocks. While we were in Columbia, at Monte and Gales home, Franklin flooded over the top! All roads, interstates, and side roads were closed and blocked by police. We start freaking out, because you guessed it, the storms have now caught us. Tornado sirens go off, we are in the car at night and can't move. We end up going a back-back way - very scared because the roads are farmland and we think they for sure will be closed but what else to do? We round a corner and run face to face with a real life, heaven to ground TORNADO!!!! We don't have a picture because you've never seen a car turn around quicker or heard more screams in your life! It is WAYYYYYY worse in real life than on TV. It is awesomely heart stopping. We book it to the closest friend and sit there for about an hour. When the storm seemed to have passed or at least the sirens went off, we venture out again. Mind you the entire 5 surrounding counties are still under black but we've got to get home cause the flooding is only going to get worse. We find many road blocks on our wayyyy out of the way routes we were thinking up, but finally find one, getting home about 4 hours after we left Columbia. We cheered and gave much thanks.

Sunday morning (church cancelled) only a few hours after we got home, we spent about 2 hours in our safe spot - tornados one after the other, so exhausted, but lucky! So many people's homes are floooded, 12 dead. It rained all day making the flooding beyond anything ever seen here. Electricty out , threat of water being turned off, we had to fill up bathtubs just to make sure we can flush toilets etc. They thought maybe 4-5 days without water. Sewage was flooding over obviously.

Monday beautiful skies. Schools out, major roads still closed. We helped many people clean out garages, so gross! We have electricty and water but it needs to be boiled. Sunday for FHE we put together real life 72 hr kits. Like documentation and toilet paper and everyhting. This was really a great experience. Are we ready for even a few days without water? how can we cook for a few days without gas/electricty? If we can't drive anywhere how will our meals be? Well, we would have done pretty good for a few days, plus helping neighbors but nnot much more than that. We have plenty of food and water, but no way to cook it. No firewood, no big iron pans, not even an ax ..... something to think about.

Anyway I just thought I'd write to tell you that we're okay. I know you all were SO WORRIED about us. I couldn't even field all of the calls from my family. I think I'm the only one whose family isn't freaking out... :)
Love you all,
Sonja

Check out these links. Mom remember the hotel? So sad, they aren't taking reservatins for at least 6 months. It is a huge economic loss to the city, as the titans stadium, as downtown etc....

This is Interstate 24 (a school bldg floating down the highway!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XyRNt2Uur8

Opryland Hotel
http://www.wsmv.com/video/23435320/index.html

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=DN&Dato=20100503&Kategori=WILLIAMSON&Lopenr=5030802&Ref=PH