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Volunteer Phil Hunolt recently returned from a three-week deployment to the Nashville, Tennessee area helping victims of the extensive flooding there. This is his blog.
Deployment to Nashville was an unforgettable experience. I was assigned to an Emergency Response Vehicle crew which had already been delivering to the Bordeaux area of Nashville's near north east side. I saw a great deal of damage and saw many homes that looked as if they had been abandoned. Others were gutted down to the brick outer-layer and some were just washed away. In the Bordeaux area, one resident spoke of fast-flowing water that was up to the numbers on the front of his house...nearly 5 feet off the ground. Many of the residents were gone because power and water had been shut off.
Below, are some pictures I took of the Bordeaux area of Nashville:
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This house was next to a creek. The
owner's car was washed away into the creek as the flood waters swept it
from the driveway.
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 Here is the car from the same
location that I mentioned above. I spoke briefly with the resident.
He
had 3 outbuildings in his backyard, but laughingly indicated that
only
one of them was actually his.
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This house is located in Bordeaux
on Couch Street, an area heavily affected by the floods in Nashville.
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Also on Couch street in
Bordeaux,
rotting insulation from a crawl space was left in the sun as
residents
slowly began the reconstruction process. This was a fairly common
sight
in this area.
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This is a shot of the house from
the first picture above, showing the driveway that the owner's car was
swept from. To put things into proper prospective, the water flowed at
least 25-30 mph at a level just about to the top of the cars currently
sitting in the driveway.
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In Bordeaux, we ran across a
volunteer church group who we fed and were then asked to join, in
prayer. They thanked us in prayer, for the food and water that they
received. We disembarked from the ERV, long enough to form a circle
and
hold hands as we bowed our heads. This was simply awesome.
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I was assigned to "Ernie The Erv"
out of Peoria, Illinois. As a precursor to out-processing, I took Ernie
in for a "physical" and asked his "doctor" to pose for a picture with
Ernie. He was surprised that Ernie has his own Facebook page: Ernie
TheErv. Can we say, "Open wide and say Ahhhh?"
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Ernie was assigned to Kitchen
#1,
Franklin Pike. Today, he waits in line for food to be distributed to
the
Bordeaux area. Food was prepared by SBC, the Southern Baptist
Convention.
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The ERV driver pictured here, was on her first DRO, and was quite
excited about her assignment. So, I asked for her picture and she posed.
Awesome attitude from this volunteer from Michigan.
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