At least 22 dead and more than 50 missing in Tennessee floods

Rescue teams searched desperately on Sunday amid broken homes and tangled debris for dozens of people still missing after record-breaking rains sent floodwaters sweeping through mid-Tennessee.

At least 22 people were killed and more than 50 were still missing as of Sunday afternoon, according to Humphreys County Information Officer Gray Collier. Authorities feared the death toll would rise.

Flooding in rural areas destroyed roads, cell phone towers and phone lines, leaving families in doubt as to whether their loved ones survived the unprecedented flood. Rescuers were going door to door, said Kristi Brown, Humphreys County School Health and Safety Supervisor Coordinator.

Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis said many missing live in areas where the water has risen fastest. Their names were on a sign in the county emergency center.

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

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee toured the area, stopping on Main Street in Waverly where some homes were washed away by their foundations and people sifted through their waterlogged possessions.

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 in shock over it all. I’m just torn apart by my friend. My house is nothing, but my friend is gone,” Foster told the governor.

The hardest-hit areas have seen double the rainfall the Middle Tennessee region had in previous worst-case flood scenarios, 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 downpours quickly turned the streams that run behind the backyards and through downtown Waverly into raging rapids. Kansas Klein business owner stood on a bridge in the city of 4,500 on Saturday and saw two girls clinging to a puppy and clinging to a plank of wood as the current was too fast for that anyone can grasp them.

He is not sure what happened to them. Klein heard that a girl and a puppy had been rescued downstream, and another girl had also been rescued, but he wasn’t sure it was them.

By Sunday, the floodwaters were gone, leaving behind wreckage of wrecked cars, demolished businesses and homes and a chaotic, tangled mix of things inside.

“It was amazing how far it came and how quickly it went,” Klein said.

The Humphrey County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page filled with people looking for missing friends and family. GoFundMe Pages were created to ask for help with funeral costs for the dead, including 7-month-old twins torn from their father’s arms as they tried to escape.

Not far from the bridge, Klein told The Associated Press by phone that dozens of apartment buildings in a social housing area known as Brookside appeared to have been hit the hardest by the Trent Creek flash flood.

“It was devastating: buildings were knocked down, half of them were destroyed,” Klein said. “People were removing the bodies of people who had drowned and did not get out.”

At Waverly’s Cash Saver grocery store, employees stood on desks, cash registers and a flower display as waters from the creek that is usually 400 feet from the store rushed after devastating the low-rise housing. neighboring income. At one point, they tried to break through the attic ceiling and couldn’t, store co-owner David Hensley said.

The flood waters stopped rising as quickly as the situation became dire and a rescue boat passed. “We told him if there is someone else you can find go get them, we think it’s okay,” Hensley said.

Just east of Waverly, the town of McEwen was hit by 17.02 inches (43.2 centimeters) of rain on Saturday, breaking the state’s 24-hour record of 13.6 inches since 1982, according to the national meteorological service in Nashville, although Saturday’s numbers are expected to be confirmed.

A flash flood watch was issued for the area before the onset of rain, with forecasters saying 4 to 6 inches of rain was possible. The worst storm on record in that region of Middle Tennessee dropped just 9 inches of rain, said Krissy Hurley, a meteorologist with the Nashville Weather Service.

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

Recent 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 Saturday’s flooding, but noted last year that his office had dealt with floods that were expected perhaps once every 100 years in September south of Nashville and in March closer to the city.

“We had an incredible amount of water in the atmosphere,” Hurley said of Saturday’s flooding. “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.