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Tennessee city residents who suffered catastrophic flooding over the weekend describe the horrors left by the disaster that left 21 people dead.
Many told ABC News that the severity of the disaster caught them off guard.
Tarri Holderman said her 15-year-old niece, Lily Bryant, was missing in Humphreys County after she and her sister, Kailynne, were swept away by a debris raft. Kailynne was found alive but the family are still looking for Lily, said.
Debris is scattered throughout the area and houses have been swept several meters from their foundations, residents said. Some houses are still standing but are filled with mud and debris.
A man described several cars piled up in front of his back porch.
Resident Lindsay Daniel told ABC News that she, her husband and their 8-year-old son had no choice but to take refuge in their attic to avoid drowning in the water.
Daniel asked his son to monitor the water levels in the bathroom. Once it reached a certain height, the family knew they had to escape, cutting off the attic air vent. They were rescued five hours later, Daniel said.
When entrepreneur Logan Callahan checked out the home of a good friend who had lived there for decades, it was barely recognizable, he told ABC News. It had been torn from its foundation, leaving a gas line open and causing the house to burn.
Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis described seven to ten miles of massive devastation in the area.
“We’re not talking about people whose only homes are flooded, we’re talking about that, but we’re talking about houses pulled from the foundation, houses that people can’t get into because the floors are gone,” Davis told the journalists. during a press briefing Monday afternoon. “We’re talking to people going out and back home and their cars are gone. It’s just gone.”
Up to 10 people are still missing after central Tennessee was hit with record-breaking precipitation from Friday to Saturday morning, but officials have warned the number could continue to fluctuate.
Flooding in the area caused cars to be thrown away as toys and houses torn from their foundations, officials said.
A preliminary precipitation total of 17.02 inches was measured in McEwen, Tennessee on Saturday, which would break the 24-hour precipitation record for the southern state, according to the National Weather Service. The old record was 13.06 inches, recorded in Milan on September 13, 1982.
Authorities, who said numbers would be fluid throughout the search and rescue efforts, initially said 22 people had died and up to 60 people were missing. Next, Gray Collier, public information officer for the Humphreys County Emergency Management Agency, told ABC News Sunday night that the current flood death toll is 21, with around 20 others still missing. . As of Monday morning, the death toll remained the same but the number of missing stood at 40.
Collier told ABC News on Monday that the change from last night’s figure was in part due to some people contacting authorities to report they were safe or others were missing.
Collier noted that the number of missing is expected to decline as cell service is slowly restored in the area.
Search and rescue teams need to be “very, very careful” when moving debris while combing missing people, Mayor Wallace Frazier in Waverly, Tennessee, told ABC News.
The Waverly, Tennessee Department of Public Safety said the death toll is not expected to increase significantly, according to Collier. The Department posted a list of those potentially missing, but Collier said the list did not include missing children.
Humphreys County, which includes the town of Waverly, is located along the Tennessee River, about 90 minutes west of Nashville.
“We have power outages all over the area,” said Rob Edwards, deputy head of the Humphreys County Sheriff’s Office. “To compound the problems is the loss of all cellphone coverage by the major carriers. They are bringing in portable units to facilitate communications. We have lost a lot of both rural and main roads – never before seen.”
President Joe Biden expressed his “deepest condolences” to the victims of the flash floods and their families at a press conference on Sunday evening. He said the federal government had contacted Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee.
“We will offer all the help they need for this terrible time,” Biden told reporters.
Lee was due to take stock of the situation on Sunday night.
Flash flood watches were in effect across much of central Tennessee on Saturday.
The Hardin County Fire Department, which has been deployed to assist neighboring Humphreys County, called the destruction “unbelievable” and said search teams would return to the area on Sunday morning.
The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency has warned people to avoid travel to Humphreys, Houston, Dickson and Hickman counties.
The Red Cross said it has opened emergency shelters at the Dickson County YMCA in Dickson, the Fairfield Church of Christ in Centerville, and the Waverly Church of Christ and Waverly First Baptist Church in Waverly.
The latest National Weather Service forecast Monday morning showed no significant rain expected in Tennessee over the next few days.
Victoria Arancio, Matt Foster, Max Golembo, Joshua Hoyos, Julia Jacobo, Will McDuffie and Morgan Winsor of ABC News contributed to this report.
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