The Great Middle Tennessee Flood: May 7 2010 Morning

 OS bows in the direction of his betters, this time Patten Fuqua, a rabid Nashville Predators Hockey Fan/Journalist/Blogger at Section 303.

This man can by-golly write, and says much that needs to be said about what has happened here since last Friday evening. He notes that most of the world never noticed the devastation that visited this part of the country, choosing to focus on the car bomb in Times Square that (by God's Grace) did not go off, and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. (OS would add to his list, the UK elections, the slow motion train-wreck of the EuroZone, and our friends on Wall Street who once again proved that they are just little boys playing with gasoline and matches. But he digresses...)

Here's what Patten has to say:

The Cumberland River crested at its highest level in over 80 years. Nashville had its highest rainfall totals since records began. People drowned. Billions of dollars in damage occurred. It is the single largest disaster to hit Middle Tennessee since the Civil War. And yet…no one knows about it.

Does it really matter? Eventually, it will…as I mentioned, there are billions of dollars in damage. It seems bizarre that no one seems to be aware that we just experienced what is quite possibly the costliest non-hurricane disaster in American history. The funds to rebuild will have to come from somewhere, which is why people need to know. It’s hard to believe that we will receive much relief if there isn’t a perception that we need it.

But let’s look at the other side of the coin for a moment. A large part of the reason that we are being ignored is because of who we are. Think about that for just a second. Did you hear about looting? Did you hear about crime sprees? No…you didn’t. You heard about people pulling their neighbors off of rooftops. You saw a group of people trying to move two horses to higher ground. No…we didn’t loot. Our biggest warning was, “Don’t play in the floodwater.” When you think about it…that speaks a lot for our city. A large portion of why we were being ignored was that we weren’t doing anything to draw attention to ourselves. We were handling it on our own.

OS keeps looking for the tales of societal breakdown here, and they're not happening. People who lost lots of their worldly goods are out helping people who lost more. Not hearing many stories about price gouging, abandoned homes being burglarized by neighbors or strangers, looting, random violence, etc. Story after story, most never publicized, of people showing up with a pickup truck of supplies and a crew of people to help out their friends and neighbors, and people they've never met. People cutting back on water usage because it needs to be done. People setting up donation pages for other people who lost everything, because it needs to be done.

 This area has a loooong way to go to get back to a semblance of normal, and there are some long-term losses to work through. But, there is a recovery underway, because of the social cohesion of the small towns and neighborhoods, often centered around the thousands of small churches that dot the landscape; the thousands more small businesses that make the local economy resemble a beehive; and the relatively small but nimble governments that try to keep things more or less organized. It's certainly not a perfect world here, as OS has chronicled, but here at 'crunch time' it has been inspiring to live here.

The next time you hear some horse's ass like Bill Maher or Keith Olbermann ridicule people who live in places like Middle Tennessee, OS hopes you remember some of what happened here this week, and how we responded.

Gotta go. Furniture on the porch, and rain on the way overnight.