Waverly, Tennessee, woman broadcast the flooding live shortly before it claimed her life

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“We’re inundated right now,” she says as the water pushes debris near a door. “Really scary.”

It was the last video she appeared to post on her Facebook page. The flood would have cost him his life, according to his son.

Almond Bryant, 55, was one of at least 18 people who were killed in Saturday’s flash flooding in Middle Tennessee, including his town of Waverly, about 80 miles west of Nashville. Also among the dead in Waverly were 7-month-old twins.
More than 270 homes were destroyed – some ripped off their foundations – in flooding caused by heavy rains, officials said this week.

Almond Bryant’s 70-second video and a subsequent account of her son, who was with her, help piece together some of her last moments.

Debris can be seen Monday in the brush around a creek that reached deadly levels over the weekend in Waverly, Tennessee.

Son says mother lost after water carried them to a ruined house

In the video, a man’s voice says he thinks something has just hit the house.

“It’s scary,” she says, and about 10 seconds later she exclaims, “Oh my god. Oh my god.”

She and her son eventually ended up in the water.

Her son, Thomas Almond, reminded CNN on Tuesday that he and his mother clung to one side of the house for 30 minutes on Saturday as floodwaters rushed around her.

Then another dislodged house that was on fire approached them. They decided to let go and the water took them away, he told CNN.

More than 270 homes were destroyed in central Tennessee as flash flooding left 18 people dead, officials say

The running water dragged them into another dislodged house, which had come to rest against a gas station.

“We hit the corner of the house, and when I hit it it pulled us both out,” Almond told CNN. “And I was probably under, I don’t know, thirty to forty-five seconds.

“And I come here, and I looked around, I cried for my mother a few times. But I didn’t see her.… I knew I had to fight for myself.”

He said the current took him around a bend to another building, where he climbed onto a roof and stayed there for four hours until he was rescued – but his mother was unsuccessful, did he declare.

Up to 15 inches of rain fell in the area over a six-hour period, officials said.

Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis took a helicopter ride this week to examine the destruction and started crying when he described what he saw.

“You’ve seen us get a little emotional during some of these situations,” Davis said tearfully Tuesday. “You have to remember: these are people we know. These are families of people we know. These are people we grew up with. These are just people from our little county. And it’s very close to us. “

Hundreds of homes are affected by the flooding in one form or another, Davis said. “We have people who are in their homes who had water up to their knees and up to their waists, and now the water has receded,” he said.

CNN’s Nadia Romero, Steve Almasy and Aya Elamroussi contributed to this report.

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