The national media was late covering the recent flooding in Nashville.
It wasn’t until the photos started popping up on Facebook, and until I started receiving messages from friends there that I realized the damage.
Because the national news was MIA, Nashvillians were forced to use the Internet to show the world what was happening.
My good friend, Grammy-winning engineer/producer Neal Cappellino, posted the above photo on his Facebook page. Neal also offers the following advice, “BTW, for all with insurance claims, according to a friend file as STORM damage, not flood damage. Good luck.”
This storm was unprecedented. No one recalls Nashville ever flooding like this. Filmmaker and former MTV Street Teamer Dustin Ogdin posted this video on FB, and the following statement:
11:15 PM, TUESDAY: Finally finished pumping 5 feet of standing water from basement. Considering what friends, acquaintances, and others are going through, I consider myself VERY lucky. My heart goes out to all experiencing such difficulty right now.
I spoke with another good friend, actor/poet/singer Patti Nicole Wheeler, by phone. She says that many Nashville streets look like a construction crew just dumped asphalt on the road and left. But the damage was caused by water. “You know how it looks when you scrape paint off a wall?” Patti says. “That’s how the streets look.”
Kenny Olson, guitarist for 7dayBinge, and former Kid Rock songwriting partner, posted this video on his Facebook page on May 2 as the flooding began. He collected donations for Second Harvest Food Bank at his Wednesday night Nashville Center Stage jam session.
Most of the friends I’ve talked to are doing okay, but a lot of folks in Nashville are without the bare necessities. So far, 21 deaths have been blamed on the flooding.
The Nashvillest blog has posted a long list of ways we can all help, and a great Flood FAQ for those affected by the storm.
Finally the national media caught up.
A big problem seems to be that the attentions of the media were elsewhere – the oil spill in the gulf, the botched bombing in Times Square, the misspelling on Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star. All tragedies indeed, but there is no reason that Nashville should be forgotten.