I went to Nashville today and then to middle TN and I can not describe the overwhelming things that I saw. I never made it all the way into Nashville but you can see where the water was and still is where I drove around the area. But when I made it to Linden TN it was really hard to describe what I saw and how much was destroyed.
I was able to see first hand the destruction and the photos that my nephew took were amazing. The creek behind his home was responsible for wiping a church out and an untold amount of homes in the immediate area. It looked like an ocean all around there from the photos that were taken.
The Buffalo River was what took me back. It is just down the road a bit from their home and when I drove down a road that runs beside it you could see where the water line was about 25' to 30' above the road. The river was about 20' below the road I was on. It was really spooky seeing the trees and leaves covered with brown silt and then they were green above where the water was.
Homes washed away, cattle, animals you name it were displaced and a lot of them drowned. The roads were washed away and were back filled with sand and gravel so you could drive across them. When we were driving back across the bridge there was a horse floating in the river drifting away.
I do not know how these folks are making it. While I was at my nephews house a call came in from the county letting them know that bottled water was available for everyone in the county and gave the locations to go pick it up.
I tried to get to my place and there was no way of getting there because several bridges were washed out and the other route was under water.
We stopped in Jackson on the way home and ate at the Casey Jones Restaurant and I ran into a group of disaster relief workers for the Red Cross and was talking with them. They said that they were in Nashville and that it was pretty bad but because of the publicity it was getting they had more than plenty of folks to help in that area but they were being sent to middle TN because of the severity of the damage and loss of life.
I made sure that they knew I was really appreciative of all of their hard work and told them that if it were not for them and everyone who has pitched in we would really be in a pickle. Several of the workers said that they were really impressed with the folks in Tennessee and the fact that so many people were willing to open their homes and help others. He said even though this was a horrible thing that had happened he has never seen a community pull together like this. To me that really means something!!
Billy