Rescue crews desperately searched Sunday amid shattered homes and rubble surrounded by dozens of people still missing after record rain sent water through Middle Tennessee.
At least 22 people were killed and more than 50 were still missing as of Sunday afternoon, according to Humphreys County Public Information Officer Gray Collier. Authorities feared an increase in the death toll.
Floods in rural areas caused roads, mobile phone towers and telephone lines, leaving families uncertain as to whether their loved ones survived the unprecedented flood. Emergency workers were searching door-to-door, said Kristi Brown, coordinator of the Humphreys County Schools Health and Safety Supervisor.
Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis said many of the missing live in neighborhoods where water rose faster. Their names were on a board of directors of the county emergency center.
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Up to 17 inches of rain fell in the county in less than 24 hours on Saturday, apparently destroying the one-day rainfall record of more than 3 inches, the National Weather Service said.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee toured the area, stopping at Waverly Main Street, where some houses were washed and the foundations were sieved despite their possessions with water.
Shirley Foster cried as the governor rose. He said he barely knew a friend of his church was dead.
“I thought I was shocked by all this. I’m just destroying my friend. My house is nothing, but my friend is gone,” Foster told the governor.
The hardest hit areas saw twice as much rain as the Middle Tennessee area had in the worst previous flood scenario, meteorologists said. Storm lines moved around the area for hours, draining a record amount of moisture, a scenario that scientists have warned may be more common due to global warming.
The floods quickly turned the streams running behind the gardens and through the center of Waverly into rapids. The owner of the business, Kansas Klein, stood on a 4,500-person bridge in the city on Saturday and saw two girls pass by clinging to a puppy and clinging to a wooden board, the current too fast so that no one would catch them.
Not sure what happened to them. Klein heard that a girl and a puppy had been rescued downstream and that another girl was also saved, but he wasn’t sure it was them.
On Sunday, the waters of the flood had vanished, leaving behind rubble of wrecked cars, demolished businesses and houses, and a chaotic, tangled mix of the things inside.
“It was amazing how fast he came out and how fast he came out,” Klein said.
The Humphrey County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page is full of people looking for missing friends and family. GoFundMe pages were made asking for help with the funeral expenses of the deceased, including 7-month-old twins who were pulled from their father’s arms as they tried to flee.
Not far from the bridge, Klein told The Associated Press by phone that dozens of buildings in an area of low-income housing known as Brookside appeared to have borne the brunt of the flashing Trent Creek flood.
“It was devastating: the buildings were demolished, half of them were destroyed,” Klein said. “People were taking out bodies of people who had drowned and couldn’t get out.”
At the Cash Saver grocery store in Waverly, employees stopped at desks, logs, and a wallet, while stream waters that typically reach 400 feet from the store rushed after devastating the basement home. side income. At one point, they tried to open the cells in the attic and were unable to, said store co-owner David Hensley.
The flood waters stopped rising so quickly when the situation became serious and a rescue boat passed by. “We told him that if there’s anyone else you can get, go get them, we think we’re fine,” Hensley said.
Just east of Waverly, the city of McEwen was hit Saturday with 17.2 inches (43.2 centimeters) of rain, breaking the state’s 24-hour record of 13.6 inches since 1982, according to the National Meteorological Service in Nashville, though Saturday’s figures would have to be confirmed.
A flash flood clock it was issued for the area before the rain started, with forecasts saying it was possible 4 to 6 inches of rain. The worst storm recorded in this area of Middle Tennessee fell only 9 inches of rain, said Krissy Hurley, a meteorologist with the Nashville Weather Service.
“Predicting almost a record is something we don’t do very often,” Hurley said. “Twice the amount we’ve seen is almost unfathomable.”
Recent scientific research has determined that extreme rain events will be more frequent due to man-made climate change. Hurley said it’s impossible to know his exact role in Saturday’s flood, but noted last year that his office was dealing with floods that used to be expected perhaps once every 100 years in September south of Nashville and in March closer to the city.
“We had an incredible amount of water in the atmosphere,” Hurley said of Saturday’s flooding. “The storms developed and moved around the same area over and over again.”
The problem is not limited to Tennessee. A federal study found that man-made climate change doubles the chances of the types of heavy rains that in August 2016 threw 26 inches of rain around Baton Rouge, Louisiana. These floods killed at least 13 people and damaged 150,000 homes.