we are nashville

i love nashville!! i'm amazed at how this city has joined together to help each other. we are now getting some national news coverage, but it took quite a while for the media to realize what a disaster we have over here. a blogger (who usually writes about hockey, i think) wrote an amazing article that was kind of a rally cry for nashvillians. it's become our slogan as we're getting through the tough clean up. check it out.

justin and i went out and helped on saturday. it was unreal. we completely gutted a family's home. we either packed up or laid out all their belongings depending on whether they were still wet or not. a couple guys were crawling around in the very small still soaked crawl space, pulling out insulation. nasty, nasty job. when we had to leave they were starting to rip up the floors and the drywall. the homeowners were overwhelmed with the amount of help they had. the man said, "i've never had this many people in my home for a party, let alone to help me clean up after something like this!"

we're still conserving water and hoping the other water treatment plant will be up and running soon. the river finally fell below flood stage a few days ago. (flood stage is at 40 feet and the river crested at 52 feet.) today the tide "loads of hope" trucks arrived and they'll be washing, drying and folding flood victims clothing using their own trucked in water.

if any of you want to help, you can donate $10 to the nashville red cross by texting "redcross" to 90999.

major damage

Well, things are pretty bleak here in Nashville. You may not have heard about this, because the national news thinks there are other things more important. Nashville got over 15 inches of rain in about 48 hours. The Cumberland River, which twists throughout Nashville has overrun it's banks. It crested last night at 51 feet. It has flooded downtown, the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Grand Ol Opry, the Titans stadium and many other places. The Opryland Hotel has 10 feet of water in it and all the guests had to be evacuated. The death toll in metro Nashville alone is over 10, I think. Our house is fine, but the street behind us is still flooded. There are two water treatment plants in Nashville. One has been compromised due to flood waters and has been shut down. They are sandbagging the other in hopes to save it from being flooded as well. We are all being asked to conserve water.

Ariel view of downtown:

Wide view shot of Broadway, downtown:

The Grand Ol Opry:

One of the areas hit the hardest, Bellevue:

I-24:

i need a boat

As I'm typing this, my house is shaking from thunder and I can barely hear myself think due to the sound of INCREDIBLY hard rain on my roof. Most of our landscaping in ruined. I'm so worried my garden is ruined!!

Yesterday my friend Rana and I were on our way home from a baby shower in Spring Hill (45 minutes away) and everyone suddenly came to a stop on the highway. We figured it was a wreck due to the rain. Well, it wasn't. There was water covering the highway across the barrier in the middle so high, it would have been over your head if you tried to walk through. We ended up turning around and going the wrong way on the highway after sitting in the parking lot that was I65 for an hour and a half. It took us over 4 hours to finally get home. It was a nightmare. At least we weren't on the other side of town. Look up "Nasvhille I24 flood" on Youtube and you'll see a video of a mobile home floating down the highway. Eight people are dead so far. I guess it makes my worry about our yard seem a little less important.