Devastating Tennessee flooding leaves at least 22 dead and dozens missing
Rebecca Falconer
Mon, August 23, 2021, 6:51 AM·2 min read
Severe flooding in parts of middle Tennessee has left at least 22 people dead and dozens of others unaccounted for,
local authorities said on Sunday.
The latest: Waverly Chief of Public Safety Grant Gillespie
told reporters search-and-rescue were working into the night to find those missing from Saturday's flooding, driven by heavy rainfall.
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- Gillespie noted that with the extreme weather causing internet and phone lines to go down in some places — including the 911 emergency line — rescuers were conducting "old school" work, conducting door-to-door checks.
- In Waverly, Humphreys County — the town hit hardest by the flooding — hundreds of homes were left uninhabitable, and the waters snapped power lines and "slabs of roadway peeled from the ground," the Tennessean reports.
- Officials announced an 8 p.m. curfew in Waverly.
By the numbers: 17.02 inches of rain had fallen in the city of McEwen from midnight to just before 10.30p.m. Saturday ET — meaning it "likely broke the all-time 24 hour rainfall record for the state,"
the NWS tweeted.
The big picture: The National Weather Service issued its most dire flood alert for the affected area on Saturday as relentless heavy rain caused creeks to overflowed amid a "flash flood emergency."
- The water from the Saturday's flooding has started to recede in some areas, per the Washington Post.
What they're saying: Speaking from the White House Sunday evening, President Biden expressed his "deepest condolences for the sudden and tragic loss of life" due to the flash flooding.
- The White House has reached out to the community and stands ready to offer its support, the president added.
- Waverly Mayor Buddy Frazier told WKRN: "This is the most devastating disaster that we’ve every experienced in this area."
Of note: A
UN IPCC report on climate science published earlier this month found that extreme precipitation events, including heavy downpours, are becoming more frequent and severe.
Editor's note: This story has been updated with to reflect the death toll increase and with additional other details throughout.
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22 Dead in Tennessee Floods—Including Baby Twins Torn From Dad’s Arms
Tracy Connor
Sun, August 22, 2021, 8:24 AM·2 min read
GoFundMe
Twin 7-month-old babies were swept from their father’s arms during devastating flooding in rural Tennessee that left dozens more dead or missing.
By early evening, the death toll in Humphreys County in the middle of the state had risen to 22, with more feared to have perished.
Record-setting rains on Saturday led to swollen creeks that unleashed flash floods in Waverly and the surrounding area, swamping homes and leaving residents clinging to debris in raging rapids.
“They were washed away in the flood,” a relative of the twins wrote on
GoFundMe. “The mother grabbed a tree and the father had the 2 twins the 5 year old and 19 month old and sadly the 2 baby’s left his arms!” The infants’ grandmother confirmed their death to
local station WZTV.
As the floodwaters receded on Sunday, emergency crews began searching for the living and dead in a hellscape dotted with debris and cars standing on end in mud. Survivors, meanwhile, shared the harrowing scenes they had witnessed.
Hardin County Fire Department
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Hardin County Fire Department
Kansas Klein, whose pizzeria was destroyed by 7 feet of water, told the
Associated Press he saw two girls holding onto a puppy and a wood board sweep by her. He did not know their fate.
He said a low-income housing complex took the brunt of the flooding.
“It was devastating: buildings were knocked down, half of them were destroyed,” Klein said. “People were pulling out bodies of people who had drowned and didn’t make it out.”
Hardin County Fire Department
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Hardin County Fire Department
Over the course of Sunday, the death toll rose hour by hour.
“We’re working very diligently to identify, photograph, reunite and get some questions answered for families—and that's really tough considering our logistics, without phones and communications,”
Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis told reporters. Phone and power lines were down throughout the county, and many roads were impassable.
He choked up as he talked about the scope of the loss in a tight-knit community.
“They just went and recovered one of my best friends—he drowned in this,” he said. “It's tough but we’re going to move forward.”
The speed and brutality of the rain shocked weather forecasters. Most had predicted four to six inches of rain would fall in the town of McEwen, also in Humphreys County, but more than 17 inches ended up falling on Saturday, breaking the state record of 13 inches in 24 hours.
Krissy Hurley, a forecaster in Nashville, told the AP, “Forecasting almost a record is something we don’t do very often. Double the amount we’ve ever seen was almost unfathomable.”
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