After the Flood: Nashville Rebuilds and Reaches Out

"Rain, rain on my face/It hasn't stopped raining for days/My world is a flood/Slowly I become one with the mud." - "Flood" by Jars of Clay

It's been a long, wet few weeks here in Music City, and, like many other Nashvillians, I'm exhausted.

Ever since the water rose the first weekend in May, we've all been digging out and drying off. The 13.5 inches of rain that fell in less than two days - the most in this area in recorded history - affected the entire city. Now that the water is subsiding, it doesn't matter whether or not you suffered any damage personally, everyone is part of the clean up crew.

I don't know of anyone who hasn't pulled out some soggy drywall, emptied a waterlogged basement, sorted through someone's damp belongings or made food for those who were doing any or all of the above. It's the new normal here in Music City, and we're all pitching in wherever we can. The need for bottled water and sandwiches and cleaning supplies seems never-ending, and at times, it feels like the entire city is still covered in a film of mud. Then there's the mold. Once you get a whiff of it, it's a smell your nose won't soon forget.

Of course, despite the clean-up effort, we're still in shock. Seeing our beloved Grand Ole Opry under several feet of water will do that, even to a transplanted southerner like myself. Despite its history, though, it can't compare to the human losses suffered. The fact that the storm claimed 30 lives still seems unbelievable. In most cases, they were simply people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught up in floodwaters that rose rapidly in neighborhoods where flooding was unheard of, until there was no way out.

The water was an equal opportunity offender: it totaled businesses, landmarks, cars and houses in high-end neighborhoods and the most modest areas. No one was immune. Then as soon as the rain stopped, it was replaced with a flood of stories. Between friends, coworkers and fellow churchgoers, everyone knows someone who lost everything.

My pastor's basement had five feet of water in it. They sent a picture of plastic storage bins and boxes of Christmas ornaments floating around in the muck. A friend's business was underwater. Another friend told a frightening story of getting stuck in standing water that stalled her car's engine and rose to her waist before she could get to safety. Her shoes were washed away in the escape, but she made it to dry land. Others who were safe at home found their neighborhoods surrounded on all sides by water and without electricity for days.

Then there were our Christian artist "friends." I saw pictures on Facebook of Jars of Clay carrying out recording equipment, instruments and merchandise from their flooded studio. Franklin, a suburb of Nashville that is home to a host of CCM artists, saw its historic downtown cut off when the roads around it were submerged. I talked to Brandon Heath a few days after the storm and he told me about going door to door in his Germantown neighborhood in Nashville inviting flooded neighbors with no electricity to stop by his condo to clean up. It's a safe bet that dozens of others in the music community were doing the same.

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