Our city has survived a millennial flood. We feel so fortunate to have been spared, but it hurts to see how badly this has hammered our community and neighborhood. Sad too to realize a city could drown without much notice from the rest of the nation.
On the other hand, I have never been as proud of my community as I have been in the last two weeks. I am also proud of the response of our ward. People helping their neighbor, putting in long hours on dirty, smelly work to help out people who may have been strangers just a few days before. It brings tears to my eyes thinking of one of the men in our ward late at night mucking out the water soaked insulation from a dear sister in our ward's crawlspace. That is what it means to bear one another burden and to mourn with those who mourn. I am thinking of our good bishop who during the three days that their neighborhood was cut off from the rest of the city and from any electronic communication including cell phone, was working night and day to make sure people were safe and to save what could be saved and then took work off for the next week to work the cleanup. I am thinking of my son and the young men of our ward who had a whole week off from school and spend most of it cleaning homes. I am thinking of a isolated part of our city that literally had ten or twelve person per house for blocks and blocks helping with the stripping and clean-up of each home. Church groups, community groups, all coming together to help. Not just on one day, but day after day. After a response like this, I think I understand why Tennessee is called the volunteer state.
Sadly, many did not have flood insurance, often because they were told that either that it wasn't offered for their area or because it seemed improbable that they could ever be flooded. Ironically, we live in the FEMA flood plain and are required to have flood insurance, but our house (and new home) was spared despite having water running on all four sides of the home at one point.
It is also surreal to me because I wasn't here during the actual days of flooding, but had to watch the response of our ward begin to unfold from a far thanks to a google document that was set up by a member of the EQ presidency out of the flood zone that quickly evolved into a command center for the response to a building crisis. What was scary was when people who have been updating the google document became radio silent and could no longer be reached even by cell phone. Especially when my home became one of these. In time, it became apparent that most of our area had lost power and phone and internet, as individual portions of the neighborhood became trapped in their little islands as the flood waters covered the roads. Fortunately, no member of our ward died or was injured, although sadly a number of older couples from our area were swept away or drowned in their cars. A good many of our friends and neighbors homes are devasted. Our prayers are for them and for all our city.
Several of our friends live down this street and we had looked at buying several homes here.
Semi-trucks parks in our little town for a few days because the freeway is under water.
The day after the flood, the soccer field (which is in the background and about 20 feet below the level of the road and normally about 30 feet above the river) is completely under water, trapping many of our friends who live in the subdivision down this road Rescue crews used their boats to evacuate houses that were underwater.
The creek behind our house overflowed into the easement between our house and the neighbor's house.
Our street beginning to flood on May 2 (It got knee deep on the other end)...
and the next day, flood water gone.
The creek behind our house is now calm 3 days later.
