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

Flooding in rural areas on Saturday destroyed roads, cell phone towers and phone lines, leaving families in doubt about the survival of loved ones. Many of the missing live in areas where the water has risen the fastest, said Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis.

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

“I know we have reached out to the community,” said the president. “We are ready to offer them our support. I asked the administrator [of the Federal Emergency Management Agency] talk to the governor [Bill] Lee of Tennessee right away and will offer all the help they need for this terrible time. “

The dead included twin toddlers swept from their father’s arms, according to family members, and a foreman at a ranch owned by County music star Loretta Lynn. Davis, a county sheriff of about 18,000 people some 60 miles west of Nashville, said he lost one of his best friends.

Up to 17 inches of rain fell in less than 24 hours, appearing to break Tennessee’s record for day-long precipitation of more than 3 inches, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.

Governor Lee toured the area, stopping on Main Street in Waverly where some houses were washed away by their foundations and people sifted through waterlogged property. Shirley Foster cried as the governor approached. She said she had just heard that a friend from her church had died.

“I thought I was above the shock of it all,” she told Lee. “I’m just torn apart by my friend. My house is nothing, but my friend is gone.

The hardest-hit areas have seen double the rainfall the region had in the previous worst-case flood scenario, meteorologists said. Storm lines moved across the region for hours, squeezing out a record amount of moisture – a scenario scientists say may be more common due to global warming.

The showers turned the streams into rapids. Company owner Kansas Klein said he stood on a bridge in the city of 4,500 on Saturday and saw two girls hang on to a puppy and hold onto a board. wood as they passed, the current being too fast for anyone to catch. Klein said he heard that a girl and a puppy were rescued downstream, and another girl was also rescued, but he wasn’t sure it was them.

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

“It was amazing how far it came and how quickly it went,” 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 for seven-month-old twins torn from their father’s arms as he tried to escape.

Klein said dozens of buildings in a low-income residential area of ​​Brookside appeared to have been hit the hardest by a Trent Creek flash flood.

“It was devastating: buildings were knocked down, half of them were destroyed,” Klein said. “People were removing the bodies. “

Lynn’s ranch foreman Wayne Spears died while watching the animals, Sheriff Davis said.

“He’s in his barn and the next thing you know he goes from checking the animals in the barn to hanging out in the barn to people who see him floating in the stream.” And that’s how quickly it had happened, ”the sheriff said.

A photo taken by someone at the ranch showed Spears in a cowboy hat hanging from a pillar, brown, bubbling water rising to his chest.

“Wayne is just one of those guys, he does everything for everyone, if there’s a job to do,” said his friend Michael Pate, who met Spears at the ranch 15 years ago.

At the Cash Saver grocery store, employees stood on desks, cash registers and a flower display as waters from a creek usually 400 feet away rushed into the store. They tried to break through the attic ceiling but couldn’t, said store co-owner David Hensley.

The waters stopped rising as the situation became dire. A lifeboat passed by. “We told him if there’s someone else there you can go get them, we think it’s okay,” Hensley said.

Just east of Waverly, the town of McEwen was hit by 17.02 inches of rain, breaking the state record of 13.6 inches over 24 hours since 1982, according to the NWS.

A flash flood watch was issued before the onset of the rain, with forecasters saying 4 to 6 inches was possible. The worst storm on record in the region fell only 9 inches, said Krissy Hurley, NWS meteorologist in Nashville.

“Almost predicting a record is something we don’t do very often,” said Hurley. “Double the amount we have ever seen was almost unfathomable.”

Scientific research has determined that extreme rainfall events will become more frequent due to human-induced climate change. Hurley said it was impossible to know his exact role in the flooding, but noted his office was dealing with flooding that was expected to be perhaps once every 100 years last September in the south from Nashville and in March, closer to the city.

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

The problem is not confined to Tennessee. A federal study found that human-caused climate change is doubling the chances of the types of heavy downpours that in August 2016 dumped 26 inches of rain around Baton Rouge, Louisiana. These floods killed at least 13 people and damaged 150,000 homes.