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Record rainfalls and major flooding in Nashville left over 20,000 buildings without power and hundreds of families unable to leave or get to their homes.
Lipscomb’s campus escaped major damage from the flooding and opened its facilities to the Red Cross as a shelter for displaced families and their pets.
Tom Wood, director of campus enhancement, said that the campus fared very well compared to other places in Middle Tennessee.
“I’m proud of the old girl,” Wood said of Lipscomb’s campus. “I’d say we have about a week’s worth of restoration to do, maybe two weeks at the most. There was minor damage done to the first levels of McFarland, the Bennett Campus Center and Burton, and the basements of Sewell and Elam were flooded as well.”
Second Avenue downtown, at the base of the newly-constructed Pinnacle building.
While Lipscomb’s campus survived the flood of May 2010, other cities in the Middle Tennessee area suffered from severe flooding and lost cars, homes and businesses.
Nashville’s one-day rainfall record set in 1979 was replaced with 7.25 inches this weekend, and the two-day record is now 13.53 inches. The record was broken for the wettest May in recorded history just two days into the month, and May 2010 is already the fifth wettest month in recorded history as well.
Before the weekend of rain and overflowing tributaries, the Cumberland River was at 19 feet deep. As of Monday, May 3, the water level was at 52.5 feet, more than 11 feet over the flood level.
While the minor damage at Lipscomb is going to cost in excess of $100,000 in repairs, Wood said that he is glad the students on campus were not affected much, only the academic and administrative areas.
Though students on campus were not affected much, many students who live in the Nashville area have a lot of clean-up to do after the weekend’s floods.
Libby Barker, a senior marketing major from Arrington, Tenn., lives in the Crieve Hall area with some of her friends. Her garage-turned-basement accumulated four inches of water despite the housemates’ efforts to keep keep their basement dry.
“The water came in through the old garage door,” Barker said. “We had tons of stuff stored in the basement that we moved upstairs, and we also had to tear up the carpet. We tried to sweep water up as it came into the basement, but it just kept flowing in.
“Not a whole lot was ruined, it’s just going to be kind of a yucky feeling for the next couple of weeks. It was a whole lot worse for our neighbors next door who got a foot of water in their house.”
Barker got the last two dehumidifiers and the last box fan left at Home Depot, as Nashville residents have bought out hardware stores of sump pumps and other cleaning supplies. Even with cleaning and drying supplies, Barker said that time is the only solution to flooding problems.
“Once the rain stopped, we set up the fans and dehumidifiers to speed up the drying process,” Barker said. “We went down to the basement this afternoon and we were excited that we could actually see dry spots on the floor.”
Junior accounting major Ashley Southerland is from Franklin. Southerland lives in the Cottonwood neighborhood, where some of the most severe flooding took place when the Harpeth River spilled over its banks.
The neighborhood pool at Cottonwood neighborhood in Franklin, Tenn., with the remains of the playground outside the fence.
“The back of the neighborhood is right next to the Harpeth River, and that’s where most of the flooding happened,” Southerland said. “The neighborhood pool area was flooded with three or four feet of water. You can only see the chairs on the tops of the lifeguard stands, and the playground beside the pool was ripped out of the ground by the water and part of it floated up the driveway of the clubhouse.”
Though Cottonwood was one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods in Franklin, Southerland’s house house was not affected.
“There was no damage done to my house because I live near the front, away from the river,” Southerland said. “The lower part of the neighborhood that sits beside the river was where all the severe flooding happened. Houses on my street were flooded badly, but my house is perfectly fine.”
Cottonwood neighborhood in Franklin, Tenn.
Southerland, like most Nashville residents, had never seen rainfall or flooding like this before. The National Guard was evacuating people from her neighborhood on Saturday night.
Many people question why Nashville was hit so hard for three days straight with more severe rain and flooding than ever in recorded history. Barker finds the whole experience extremely humbling.
“You see images on TV like hurricanes in the southern United States where families and homes are just destroyed because of a flood, and I never understood how powerful it was until now,” Barker said. “Honestly I’m humbled in the presence of God and how powerful his works are.”
Barker said she hopes that the city of Nashville will become more of a community throughout all of the post-flood clean up.
“We have been bonding with our neighbors, like when we’re going to the dump, we ask them if we can take something for them,” Barker said. “I’d never want this to happen again and I know so many people have lost everything, but God is going to redeem everything.
“Even this morning, the sun is shining and his mercies are new, and it’s kind of refreshing.”