The Perfect Storm

Some people have been saying the recent Tennessee floods were result of "the perfect storm". Many things lined up to make this a particularly troublesome flood. We live just south of Nashville and, while our home was spared, over 100 families in our neighborhood weren't so lucky. (If consulting and blogging don't work out, I now have a fall-back career of removing duct work from crawl spaces.)

It's been gut-wrenching to see the damage, and to hear that stories from our neighborhood are not isolated. However, many of the stories people are talking about are positive. For the most part, middle Tennessee rallied. Emergency response efforts were strong. Volunteerism made the state truly worthy of its moniker of "The Volunteer State". And, believe it our not, many people are talking about how responsive FEMA has been. FEMA housing inspectors were out in force quickly. Relief checks arrived much faster than expected. The FEMA buzz is positive. In fact, most of the buzz is positive...despite the damage and hardships.

As proud as we Tennesseans are of our response to the floods, we had a lot of luck working for us. For example, it's somewhat of a fluke that few of us lost power for any significant amount of time. Our house on a hill was one of a few in the neighborhood to lose power. It's an eerie sight to see homes down the street, evacuated, with several feet of water in them and all of the lights on.

Because power outages were not widespread, we were able to watch local TV. Our local TV stations did a good job keeping us informed, even though they were having trouble getting from place-to-place because of flooded roads. For the most part, cable service was uninterrupted, no small feat since the local cable company's main facility was right in the path of the flood. Were it not for sandbags and a determined cable company, we could have easily experienced widespread cable outages.

Not so important for us to keep our HBO and cooking channels in service during an emergency, you may think. Well, think again. How many people receive their local TV stations through the cable, and don't know how to pick them up through the airwaves when cable is out...particularly since digital TV has come? And, what if the peak of the floods happened after we were asleep, instead of during the Kentucky Derby when so many of us were watching TV? What would have awakened us and told us our homes were about to be flooded so we could try to move belongings to the second floor before we were ordered to evacuate?

So, one of the things that concerns me is that we have potential to be lulled into complacency by our pride in our response. This was one heckuva flood, many would say the worst disaster to hit the area...ever. But, we're strutting our stuff about how well we're doing. Next time, though, we could easily lose access to TV, our mainstay of information. Instead of rallying, we could easily feel isolation and helplessness that others in similar situations have felt.

Don't get me wrong. We're a hardy and resourceful lot in middle Tennessee. We've made this our home for over 25 years by design. We love it here. But, in this particular disaster, we've also been a lucky lot. I hope we'll shore up our emergency alerting and communications capabilities so next time something major happens, we'll again be able to strut our stuff about how well we've responded.

All the best,

Rick