Margie and I live in Nashville, Tennessee. A very special place that we have come to like, maybe even love, a great deal. Home of country music. Home of one of the longest running live Saturday night radio shows of all time, the “Grand Ole Opry.” Home of the Tennessee Titans National Football League Team. Home of the Loveless Café. The Country Music Hall of Fame. The world famous Bluebird Café. And, as of a few weeks ago The Great Flood of 2010.
Margie I were in Las Vegas helping celebrate a very special friend’s 80th birthday when we first began seeing and hearing snippets of what was happening back home. Reports of 8 inches of rain in one 8-hour period. Then 13. Now 18 inches in 36 hours! There wasn’t much national news coverage because of a bombing attempt in New York City, and a disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The hotel we were staying in didn’t have the weather channel, so we couldn’t find out much of what was happening.
Slowly news began filtering in. Nashville International Airport was closed. Scenes of a church building floating down one of our local expressways destroying itself as it rammed into cars flooded to roof level and semi trailer trucks. Images of streets we travel on every day that were now raging torrents of water. Pictures of basement floors ruptured by the hydrostatic pressure of ground water in the Vanderbilt Medical Center, where we have been patients, water spewing as if it was coming from an artesian well, just a few blocks from where we live.
We called a friend to ask him if he could go take a look to see what might have happened to our house. He tried the first day, but all the streets that would take him to our house were closed. The second day he was able to reach the house and found the crawl space of the house flooded. When he went to Home Depot to see if he could get a sump pump to use to remove the water, the clerk smiled, reached down under the desk and came up with a drinking straw. There’s always room for a comedian. We got up early the next day and purchased a pump while in Las Vegas and brought it home with us on the plane.
Those scenes did nothing to prepare us for what we were to experience as we flew over Nashville on our descent into the recently reopened airport. The massive Opryland hotel complex looked like an island in the middle of a lake. (They hope to have it re-opened by Christmas). Expressways covered with water (some remaining that way 6 days later). The Cumberland River that runs through the heart of Nashville, normally 300 yards wide, was miles wide. It was difficult to figure out where the actual river channel was.
Once we reached our home it was clear that we had not totally escaped. Our heating and cooling system was flooded out. Our roof had leaked. Not a big deal. Compared to what many, many others had experienced, we were lucky and knew it.
Then we turned on our TV. The coverage we hadn’t been able to get in Las Vegas was suddenly right in our face, continual coverage, hour after hour. The death count clicked upward by the hour. There was not a section of town, East, West, South, or North that wasn’t impacted. It was eerie as places we knew well, had frequented often, were all part of the tragic unfolding story. One of the two water treatment plants was flooded. Electricity to downtown buildings was lost and would remain so for days. Bodies were found behind the Kroger store we have shopped. Cars having been caught in the flash flooding were piled on top of each other like a stack of wooden building blocks. Then it got personal. One friend’s house totally destroyed. Another’s first floor totally destroyed. Another lost his cars. Yet more lost their businesses. Some their studios. We know of many musicians who lost all of their instruments. Some people lost both their home and their business. People in cars who thought they were just driving through an intense rain storm were suddenly swept away when a wall of water slammed into them. There was not just one wall of water. In every low place, on every expressway, in every part of town, at one time or another a wall of water swept people and cars away in a an instant. They were not out joyriding.
Few of them had flood insurance. Most did not live in a flood plain. Flooding like this had never occurred. It has been named the “1,000-year flood”. Stories of miracle rescues, close calls, and people pitching in to help were also a part of the story. Prayers and good wishes from all over the world poured in. But as the realization of what had happened, as vignette built upon vignette, I felt heaviness and a depression begin to settle on my shoulders.
There was absolutely no way of rationalizing or setting straight the wave upon wave of loss. Did you hear about Kathy? Did you hear about Lee? Did you hear about Julie? How about Jerry? Keisha? How about the elderly couple trying to reach high ground whose car was washed off the highway and overturned, drowning them before they could get out. Of all the uprooted lives. Of all the lost lives. Of all the tragedy. I couldn’t find any logical place to put all that.
We had visited, just a few weeks earlier, some friends of ours who live in New Orleans. They told us and showed us what I call an “insiders” view of what hurricane Katrina meant to their city. One of the things I have realized after my own experience with the Great Flood of 2010, was that whatever empathy I felt (and I felt a lot) as they were showing us their beloved city, struggling to get back on its feet after being knocked flat, was nothing compared what they actually experienced. I know better now what they must have felt.
I will, from now on, be more careful in saying, “I know how you must feel,” unless I have had the exact same experience. One of the things the Great Flood has taught me was that unless it has happened to me, I don’t really understand. I can’t. I don’t know what losing a child is like, thankfully. Or what it’s like losing my home to a fire. Or losing everything. (As a friend of mine, a victim of this flood said, “I have heard of people losing everything, but until the moment I realized that I had indeed lost everything, I never truly knew what that meant). I do know what it is like to lose a best friend. And now I do know what it is like to live through a flood. This experience has deepened my sense of empathy. That can be nothing but a gift. A gift of empathy from the Great Flood of 2010.
