Nashville Flood of 2010

Saturday the 1rst of May, Seth, Linc, Bekah and I went to the airport early in the morning on our way to Utah to celebrate Grandma Nowie's eightieth birthday. It was raining when we left and our plane was even delayed half an hour due to the lightning. Little did we know that it wouldn't stop raining until late Sunday evening and that our home would be flooded along with most of Nashville in what they are calling the flood of the Century!!

Our vacation to Utah therefore was wonderful but full of anxiety come Sunday night when our neighbor called to say that the homes in our neighborhood were all evacuated. Then Monday they called again to say that they thought our homes were completely covered in water! Seth changed his ticket to Tuesday and flew out that morning. Luckily for us the waters did not reach the inside of our home. Unfortunately they did reach those only a couple of houses down from us. Only our crawl space and garage were flooded. The kids and I flew back Wednesday and stayed at our Pastor's house for a couple of days until the power was back on. We could not have done it without all of the help from our congregation! They were just incredible in helping us clear everything out and putting some of it back together.

It was also amazing to see all the churches and local organizations that came out everyday to bring us all lunches, supplies and even dinners! I guess that is what living in the bible belt means. All those churches around really made such a difference in everyone's lives that were affected by the flood. My work was also flooded but will hopefully be up and running in a month. Fingers are crossed anyways!

Here are some pics of the disaster and the clean-up! Enjoy.

Here is our backyard after a couple of days worth of receding. The water is still above our new fence, we didn't even know if it was there or not! (Sigh of relief, it survived!)

Here you can see the discoloration in the steps from how high the water went. Only one step away from the top!

Here is a before picture, and then the after picture.


Here you can also see how high it came and how close we were to losing everything inside.


Our poor garage. The car was totaled as the water came up so high it filled the cup holders in the center console. Our insurance alone said they had 600 claims on cars that were flooded in Nashville!
This is just down from us. It used to be a big huge drainage area that was quite deep but it filled all in with water and spilled onto the road.

All the dry wall that Seth cut out. It didn't go that high but he had to cut that high to make sure it was dry.

Our lovely crawl space underneath the house with Seth pulling down the disgusting worm-filled sprayed-on insulation. That was not a fun job as I had to do some of it!


These are the bags of insulation we pulled out from under there.


I had to get a picture of my hot husband in his great gear! And yes, in case you were wondering, the beloved Bronco II was saved! The water did not get inside the engine though it did get all of the carpets wet so Seth had to tear that all out! Yeah to my wonderful husband who spent seriously two straight weeks of working 12 to 16 hour days to get us back to normal again. With internet finally up yesterday and phones working, we are well on our way. Thanks for being my hero Seth.

Thanks again to all those we helped with their time, supplies, manual labor, bodies, money, and prayers. We could not have done it without you, at least not without going insane first! All our love and next time I will post the few pictures I have from our trip to Utah, which basically only includes one day at my moms. I was so worried about the house the whole time that I forgot to take more pictures!