[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 69 (Monday, May 10, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3451-S3452]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           TENNESSEE FLOODING

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, there is no bigger, no more heart-
wrenching, no more inspiring story today than what happened in 
Nashville in the 48 hours on May 1 and 2, over that weekend, when 2 to 
4 inches of rain were expected and up to 17 inches came. As a result of 
that--from the Opryland Hotel outside Nashville to the Millington naval 
station near Memphis--all across Tennessee there have been devastating 
floods.
  It is, according to the Weather Service, a 1,000-year rainfall event. 
I do not know how anybody knows what a 1,000-year rainfall event is--
that is a long time--but this was not a 20-year flood or a 100-year 
flood, this was a 1,000-year rainfall event that overtook the people of 
Tennessee.
  As a result, our Governor, Phil Bredesen, has asked the President to 
identify 52 counties--from the Nashville area to all the way across our 
State to the Mississippi River--as disaster areas. The President has 
responded swiftly. Forty-two of those 52 counties have been designated 
as disaster areas.
  Some people say to me: Well, there has not been so much news about 
this Tennessee flood. There are two reasons for it. One is, there has 
been a lot of other news. Greece has been collapsing. A bomber tried to 
blow up Times Square. There is turmoil over immigration in Arizona. 
There is the gulf oilspill which threatens to be the worst in history.
  But it is important for the American people to know the Tennessee 
flood last weekend is by far the largest disaster in our country since 
President Obama came into office, except for the oilspill in the Gulf 
of Mexico, and it may be that the Tennessee flood affects more people 
than what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico.
  The other reason we have not heard so much about it is this: 
Tennesseans have been busy cleaning up and helping each other instead 
of complaining and looting. So people are hurt. Thousands of people are 
hurt. But they are going

[[Page S3452]]

about their business helping themselves and helping others in 
remarkable and inspiring ways.
  I have many images from over the last few days of the visits I have 
made in Tennessee: being at the Bellevue Community Center on Saturday 
morning, where there were dozens of volunteers in red T-shirts that 
were headed out in teams to help people in that area whose homes have 
been devastated; the image of 502 soldiers from Fort Campbell--those 
are the most deployed soldiers in America--yet the commanding officer 
gave them a day's leave, and 502 of them formed teams and cleaned up 
three neighborhoods in Clarksville-Montgomery County.
  I spent an hour that same day with Mayor Bowers and Congresswoman 
Blackburn and the team that is responding in Montgomery County, and it 
is an impressive response. I would say the same for Governor Bredesen 
of Tennessee and Mayor Dean of Nashville, whose metro services have 
worked overtime.
  This is true all the way across our State to Dyer County--badly hurt; 
thousands of people have homes damaged there--to the Navy's principal 
personnel and recruiting station at Millington, just outside Memphis, 
where the Secretary of the Navy saw personally, on Saturday, the damage 
that had been done there.
  According to the Tennessean, the American Red Cross had recorded more 
than 1,300 volunteers by Friday. Whole congregations, on Sunday, showed 
up en masse to help at places such as Cross Point Community Church, 
which had more than 1,600 members of the congregation on Saturday. 
Hands-On Nashville saw more than 5,100 volunteers log more than 19,000 
hours to help out across the city by Saturday.
  Our own church, Westminster Presbyterian Church, in Nashville--we had 
a lot of people going down to help with Katrina and in Gulfport after 
those disasters--will be the center for people coming in to help the 
people in Tennessee. If you go through Nashville today--or other parts 
of Tennessee, all the way down to Memphis--you will see thousands of 
front yards littered with damage from the basements of homes.
  FEMA has been on the ground from the beginning, and I thank them for 
their prompt response. Unfortunately, we have worked with them before 
on tornadoes and other disasters, so they know Tennessee pretty well. 
By Saturday morning, 16,000 persons in Tennessee had registered with 
FEMA, and there had already been 750 inspections.
  I talked with the sheriff of Montgomery County Saturday night. He was 
flooded out, but he had been in touch with FEMA. He was already 
registered. He had arranged for his inspection. He was very well 
satisfied by that.

  Channel 4--Nashville television--had a telethon on Thursday night. 
Vince Gill and a group of stars raised $2 million in the Nashville area 
for the victims of the flood. Taylor Swift gave $500,000. Bud Adams of 
the Titans gave $400,000. So people in large and small ways are pouring 
out their hearts and their help and their money to help one another.
  As we look forward--this is not a time to complain. I did not hear 
anybody complain this past week. As I said before, maybe that is why 
there is not so much news about this. But as we look ahead, I want to 
make sure in the future we make sure we do the best possible job of 
handling floods, particularly that we have clear and correct 
information about the rising water, and that we communicate it as 
broadly as we should.
  We have learned how to do that with tornadoes. Using the media, we 
can tell you whether a tornado is coming across your house in 14 
minutes in a remarkable set of cooperation between the National Weather 
Service and the media broadcasters.
  I have asked Chairman Boxer and Ranking Member Inhofe of our 
committee, the Environment and Public Works Committee, to look at 
perhaps holding a hearing on how well the Army Corps of Engineers and 
other Federal agencies and State agencies are delivering accurate, 
clear information to businesses and individuals who might be hurt by 
the rising water.
  This morning, I flew up to Nashville with a person from Sumner County 
who was trapped in a Chevrolet Blazer with her 12-year-old son and her 
husband and nearly killed except they were rescued by emergency 
services. Another person on the plane lives on a high hill near River 
Road, and the National Guard helicopters landed four times in her front 
yard to rescue 50 people who could not get out except in that way.
  I have talked with Colin Reed, who is the chief executive officer of 
the Opryland Hotel, who had to make an evacuation order. They evacuated 
1,500 guests rather than risk what happened during Katrina because the 
water suddenly came into the Opryland Hotel--many people are familiar 
with that--and the water became 10 feet high. It is still several feet 
high there. So there is a lot of long-term damage, and I want to make 
sure we have clear and consistent information.
  I would have to add, I thank the Congress for approving my request 
over the last few years for additional funding to make two of the four 
dams on the Cumberland River safer. If they had not been made safer, 
their water levels would have been lower and tons more water would have 
poured into the Cumberland River, creating millions of more dollars of 
damages and perhaps taking lives.
  I am simply here this morning to say I am very proud of Tennessee, 
from Nashville to Memphis. There is no bigger, more heart-wrenching, 
more inspiring story than of these thousands of Tennesseans who have 
suffered a 1,000-year flood, thousands of whom have losses they 
understand will not be fully made whole. But they are busy--not 
looting, not complaining--they are cleaning up and they are helping one 
another.
  As the days go on, I will be meeting with Senator Inouye and Senator 
Cochran to make certain the Federal accounts that fund FEMA, economic 
development, the Community Development Block Grant, and other projects 
and accounts in the Federal Government that respond to natural 
disasters have enough money in them to meet the Federal part of the 
responsibility. But so far the President, his Cabinet, and others have 
been doing very well.
  The Governor of Tennessee and the mayors across our State have been 
doing extraordinarily well. But the people, who are the real heroines 
and heroes, are the men and women of Tennessee who have been hurt, or 
their neighbors who have been busy cleaning up and helping one another.
  I thank the Acting President pro tempore, and yield the floor.

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