Grace Under Pressure

Small creek beside our house for runoff in the spring growing over the street..

Still hard to believe in picture below this is our street.

In top right below is our neighbor's house which was completely surrounded by water.

Looking

Looking down our driveway

Two days later outside our house

Driving out of the neighborhood LakeviewLooking down LakeviewHedge behind bball court is tops of trees from landslide

The first weekend in May Nashville was hit by the worst rains in history.  For two days torrential bouts of rain kept falling from the sky.  The city of Nashville and its surrounding areas were devastated by flooding.  We have a new appreciation of flash flooding now that we have watched a small version of it from our front porch.  Luckily we suffered damage only under the house in our air conditioning system and several days without power.  Parts of the city in which we love to spend time, shops and restaurants we frequent as well as neighborhoods where our friends/colleagues live were devastated on a much grander scale.  Out of the floods came a wonderful reminder as to why Mommy a "Yankee" and Daddy "a Texan" have chosen to call Nashville home and raise us here.  Nashville quickly mobilized during the floods and has proudly taken care of itself and the people that call it home.  We have been amazed at the outpouring of help so quickly that came from our schools, our churches and Vanderbilt itself.  It is nice to know that you live in a city where people still care about their neighbors and believe in helping one another.  Although it may not have generated national headlines how Nashville and its people dealt with the situation, it could have been  a great inspriational  story in the midst of otherwise tough times.  Maybe you should come visit and see for yourself!
     the pictures above begin with a view from our front porch on Saturday and Sunday.  What normally is a small trickle of a stream (only during the spring) on the right side of our hourse, became  a full river.  It greatly widened the nice rock basin it normally runs through , encompassing our neighbor Paul's yard, took over the road bringing with it logs, stumps and anything else in its path.  Its strength quickly became impressive, quite obvious to us now how people drown in flashfloods.  In some of the pictures in the upper left corner you can see one of our other neighbor's house across the street which quickly became surrounded- luckily she was spared major damage.  As the flood waters went down two days later and the sun came out, we could see the aftermath getting out of our neighborhood.  Those up on the hill had huge trees all just come down, apparently the result of the mud running down the hillside.  The trees brought with them all the powerlines and poles.  We were extremely fortunate to not suffer more damage as many of those around us.  We have some incredible video of the waters which i will have to figure up how to upload.  Hopefully the summer is less eventful here in Nashville!