Big East Fork Flood 2010

Elijah and I left for Nashville on Thursday evening. We headed down south to celebrate my little sister's college graduation with other family and friends. Friday night was great. We sat around a big bon fire out in the front pasture, singing songs and enjoying each other's company. Early Saturday morning, the rains began to come. Thunder storms and even tornado warnings are not unusual for these parts during the months of spring. None of us had any idea our pasture would be flooded with rushing waters by 2pm that day. Thankfully, we all stayed home and were safe through it all.

We missed Abby's graduation as we were not able to leave the house until early this morning. Our drive way was completely washed out where it connected to the road. Huge chunks of our road (Big East Fork) have been washed away, making it difficult to drive on without a four wheel vehicle. We were only without power and water for a day and had no cell coverage for a few days, but other than that, we were fine. God protected us in so many ways. It was obvious that He was watching over us.

By Sunday morning, the waters had gone down considerably. My dad actually saw a newspaper at the end of the driveway. We took Amos and Eli down in the truck to get the paper (as an outing...we were getting desperate) but by the time my dad cleared a tree and headed down toward the road, everything was flooded again. A few hours later, the water was back up to what it had been the day before. The water rose up to our mail box and was hundreds of feet wide across our field and the field across the street. It all happened so fast!


Elijah did get to have fun in the rain, after things calmed down of course. I'm glad it was warm because we were not prepared for such weather. We got drenched.


Our driveway had a steady flow of water rushing from the pond behind our house down to the road that quickly became a river.


The places that got hit the worst are all around our house. West Nashville to downtown are still under water as the rivers crested today. Hopefully, water levels will go down by tomorrow. A lot of people are stranded at local middle schools and neighborhoods are still being evacuated. There are still a lot of houses under water. Thankfully, our house didn't see too much damage. During one of the windy storms (it stormed for two days straight!!), a large tree branch fell onto our house. It didn't create too much damage, but it did knock down part of the white picket fence our family painted and built when we were kids.


The fence surrounding our pasture was completely torn down by the rushing waters. Half of it got swept away into the pasture. Another sad thing is our driveway. My dad had just redone it with all new gravel, not a cheap job. All of the new gravel is now in piles in our pasture and the driveway is pretty torn up. All that is left near the road is dirt and big red rocks that I haven't seen since we first had it done when I was a child.
My friend who lives in Franklin posted pictures of her house and the downtown Franklin area. As of yesterday, we got 13 1/2 inches of rain in two days, the highest recorded in 130 years. They've been calling it the 100 year flood on the news. We like to call it the Big East Fork Flood or 2010. Certainly there are lots of places that got flooded, but none of them were rushing with white water like our front yard. Elijah and I will probably stay put until later this week. I will post more pictures of our vacation when we return. For now, keep us in your prayers as there is a lot going on here, beyond just the high waters.