Tennessee flood death toll rises to 22, Biden offers help | Tennessee

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At least 22 people were confirmed dead Sunday as rescue crews desperately searched through wrecked homes for dozens still missing after record-breaking rains sent floodwaters spurting across parts of Tennessee.

Rural flooding on Saturday destroyed roads, cell phone towers and phone lines, leaving families unsure if their loved ones survived. Many of the missing live in neighborhoods where water has risen faster, Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis said.

At the White House in Washington, Joe Biden said he expressed his “deepest condolences for the sudden and tragic loss of life during this sudden flood.”

“I know we’ve reached out to the community,” the president said. We are ready to support them. I asked the official [of the Federal Emergency Management Agency] to speak with the governor [Bill] Lee from Tennessee immediately and will provide any assistance they need for this terrible moment.”

Among the dead were two young children who had been swept out of their father’s arms, according to family members, and a foreman on a farm owned by county music star Loretta Lynn. Davis, the mayor of a county of about 18,000 people 60 miles west of Nashville, said he’s lost one of his best friends.

Up to 17 inches of rain fell in less than 24 hours, the National Weather Service (NWS) said, apparently breaking Tennessee’s one-day rain record by more than 3 inches.

Governor Lee toured the area, stopping at Main Street in Waverley where some houses had been washed from their foundations and people were sifting their registered property with water. Shirley Foster cried as the governor walked. She said she just learned that a friend from her church had died.

“I thought I was over the shock of all this,” she told me. “I just tore my friend. My house is nothing, but my friend is gone.”

Meteorologists said that the worst-affected areas experienced twice as much rainfall in the previous worst flood scenario. Storm streaks moved over the area for hours, siphoning off a record amount of moisture – a scenario scientists have warned may be more common due to global warming.

Heavy rain turned streams into cliffs. His employer, Kansas Klein, said he stood on a bridge Saturday in a town of 4,500 people and saw two girls clutching a puppy and clinging to a wooden plank as they passed, and the current was too fast for anyone to catch them. Klein said he heard that a girl and a puppy were rescued downstream, and that another girl was also rescued, but he wasn’t sure if they were.

Flood damage is seen along Simpson Street in Waverley. Photo: Andrew Nelles/AP

By Sunday, the floodwaters were gone, leaving wrecked cars, shops and homes wrecked.

“It was amazing how fast it came and how fast it came,” Klein said.

The Humphreys County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page is filled with people looking for friends and family. Online fundraising pages have asked for help with funeral expenses, including two seven-month-old twins who were ripped from their father’s arms while he was trying to escape.

Klein said dozens of buildings in a low-income residential area, Brookside, appear to have borne the brunt of flash floods from Trent Creek.

“It was devastating: the buildings were demolished, half of them destroyed,” Klein said. “People were getting the bodies out.”

Sheriff Davis said the foreman at Lane Farm, Wayne Spears, died while examining the animals.

“He’s out in his barn and the next thing you know, he goes from checking animals in the barn to hanging out in the barn to people seeing him floating on the stream. And that’s how fast it showed up,” the sheriff said.

A photo taken by someone at the farm showed Spears in a cowboy hat clinging to a pole, the rippling water rising to his chest.

“Wayne is just one of those guys, he does everything for everyone, if there’s work to be done,” said his friend Michael Butt, who met Spears on the farm 15 years ago.

At the Cash Saver Grocery, employees were standing on desks, logs, and a flower rack as water poured from a stream 400 feet into the store. David Hensley, the shop owner, said they tried to break into the cell in the attic but weren’t able to.

The water stopped rising when the situation was getting worse. A rescue boat passed. “We told him that if there’s someone else you can go get him, we think we’re fine,” Hensley said.

Just east of Waverley, the town of McEwen experienced 17.02 inches of rain, breaking the 24-hour record of 13.6 inches from 1982, according to the NWS.

Anthony and Vanessa Yates find their wedding wreath in their flood-damaged home. Photo: Andrew Nelles/AP

A flash flood watch was released before the rains began, with forecasters saying it could be 4 to 6 inches long. The worst storm ever recorded in the area decreased by just 9 inches, said Chrissy Hurley, a meteorologist for the NWS in Nashville.

“Expecting an almost record-breaking record is something we don’t do very often,” Hurley said. “Twice the amount we’ve ever seen was almost unfathomable.”

Scientific research has determined that extreme rain events will become more frequent due to man-made climate change. Hurley said it was impossible to know her exact role in the flooding, but noted that her office dealt with floods that were expected perhaps once every 100 years last September, south of Nashville, and in March, near the city.

“We had an incredible amount of water in the atmosphere,” Hurley said on Saturday. “Thunderstorms developed and moved through the same area over and over again.”

The problem is not limited to Tennessee. A federal study found that man-made climate change is doubling the chances of heavy rain types that in August 2016 dumped 26 inches of rain around Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Those floods killed at least 13 people and destroyed 150,000 homes.

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