Weather Outside Your Window: Tennessee flood survivors recount nightmare-inducing ordeal

By Mark Puleo, AccuWeather staff writer

Updated Aug. 25, 2021 5:59 PM EDT

There's a reason they're called flash floods.

"That water came up so fast," Kenny Miller told AccuWeather.

Miller said he was nearly swept away by forceful floodwaters in Waverly, Tennessee, Saturday when he attempted to move his car. He clutched onto a bush as the water rose around him and nearly pulled him into its grip. Debris was pelting him and going over his head as he held on. He estimated water was 7 feet deep. Finally, he somehow managed to get free and reach his home, where his daughter and her mother were inside.

"By the time he got back, it was already... we couldn't open the door anymore to let him in," Sadie Vaughn said of her father, Kenny. "He had to come in through the window."

Vaughn and Miller were just two of the thousands of residents in Waverly, Tennessee, who survived the catastrophic flood over the weekend. Every single one of them likely has equally harrowing stories.

As the town's Trace Creek was swelled by record-shattering rainfall, raging floodwaters quickly overwhelmed the area, killed at least 18 and left another three missing. The death toll was revised from 22 to 18 on Tuesday after local authorities discovered an error in how they were tallying the missing and deceased, WKRN-TV reported. By Wednesday, the number of confirmed dead was up to 20 people.

But in speaking with Brandon Clement of LSM, no Waverly resident expressed any celebratory feelings about having survived in light of the mass tragedy surrounding them.

In the town of just over 4,000 people, everybody knows everybody, 17-year-old Vaughn said. One of her friends, just two grades below Sadie in high school, is among the missing.

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Joe Comuzie looks over the home of his son Sunday, Aug. 22, 2021, which was washed off its foundation by flood waters Saturday in McEwen, Tenn. Heavy rains caused flooding in Middle Tennessee and have resulted in multiple deaths as homes and rural roads were washed away. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

"This is not going to take care of itself overnight," survivor Darlene Moran told AccuWeather. "This is going to be years in the making, you know, but it’s a small community and everybody knows everybody else, and we’re all sticking together."

Like Vaughn and Miller's recount, Moran tragically told Clement that she knew close friends and neighbors that perished in the devastation.

A lady she used to see frequently, who Moran said was always sitting on her nearby porch, was one of the victims. They used to walk together every day.

"There's so many dying and so many missing. It's just not good," Moran said through tears.

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Darlene Moran survived catastrophic flooding in the town of Waverly, riding out the storm in the attic with her elderly mother who had limited mobility due to a broken leg.

Moran and her elderly mother, who was slowed down by a broken leg, rode out the storm in their attic at the urging of Moran's husband. Like many others, she was also taken aback at the speed of the rising floodwaters.

Just minutes before retreating inside, Moran had walked down by the nearby creek to relocate her truck. She saw, and felt, firsthand how quickly the waters rose.

“When I got here, it was like ankle-deep. So I took our truck out to the road, and by the time I got back it was already butt-deep,” she said. “It was all I could do to even get here to the house, when we got in the house, of course, nobody could get here to get us out. So I tried calling 911, and I called my husband to tell him... but he said I can’t get to you, so go to the attic.”

But on the other end of that 911 call, Moran and others encountered another devastating dilemma: an overwhelmed emergency response team.

"The scariest thing was calling 911 and being put on hold or getting hung up on," Vaughn said. "I don't know how many times we called, and I was with Dixon and tried to get transferred to Waverly, but couldn't hear anything."

On the other end was static noise, she added. When she finally did get a voice on the other side, it was clear that help couldn't be on its way.

"We're in the water, we're floating in the water. We need someone here," Vaughn said she told the dispatcher. "And they said 'we'll put you on the list.'"

A car and other structure were one of many swept up in a flash flood recently, shown Monday, Aug. 23, 2021, in Waverly, Tenn. Heavy rains caused flooding in middle Tennessee days ago and have resulted in multiple deaths, and missing people as homes and rural roads were also washed away. (AP Photo/John Amis)

Days later, some survivors still find themselves drowning in the tragedy, both in reality amid the devastation, and in their sleep. Anna Mays told The Associated Press that she woke up in a panic on Monday, having a nightmare that she was back in the throes of Saturday's disaster.

She survived the flooding by clinging onto the front door of her duplex, while her brother hung onto a nearby tree as they awaited rescue.

“This morning I was having a panic attack and thought I was in water, and I was trying to get that way and trying to get this way. I was just scared half to death,” Mays told the AP. “I was just, something woke me up and I thought I was in the water, and — I never have seen — I’ve seen it on TV, but I’ve never have seen it like it in life, where cars was going by.”

In response to the deadly calamity, President Joe Biden approved a major disaster declaration for the state to free up federal funding to assist recovery efforts.

Those recovery efforts include the use of dogs to rummage through the debris to sniff out any missing people, Waverly police chief Grant Gillespie said. As the record-breaking rain totals fell, the neighborhoods closest to the swelled creek were impacted first.

According to the National Weather Service office in Nashville, over 17 inches of rain fell in McEwen, Tennessee, on Saturday, likely breaking the state's 24-hour rainfall record.

Ernest Hollis looks at his granddaughter's house, one of many that were devasted by a recent flash flood, shown Monday, Aug. 23, 2021, in Waverly, Tenn. Heavy rains caused flooding in middle Tennessee days ago and have resulted in multiple deaths, and missing people. (AP Photo/John Amis)

Victor Baker, a professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona, told AccuWeather that debris can pile up as raging floodwaters flow. That can, in turn, cause water to rise dramatically behind the debris to a depth of 5 or 7 feet all at once.

"Heartbreaking" is how Anthony Shows, a responder with the disaster response group Hope Force International, described the devastation to AccuWeather. Shows said that he's done flood response before, but this one was different.

Like Baker said, Shows reiterated that the rising creek flowed with rapids as it got backed up.

Before the flooding, Shows said the Trace Creek was tame. But the ensuing devastation was anything but docile.

"It almost feels more like a hurricane-slash-tornado response with the way things were thrown around," he said. "You can see the way it came through here and everything is clinging to the trees in that direction, like if hurricane-force winds came through here. But in this case, it was actually water. It's unbelievable."

As responders like Shows address the daunting cleanup effort, weather conditions are going to be of no assistance this week, with scorching temperatures roasting the Southeast again on Wednesday. On Tuesday, AccuWeather RealFeel® Temperatures rose as high as 104 degrees Fahrenheit and forecasters say RealFeel® Temperatures will continue to be this high through the rest of the week.

Looking ahead, rain could return in the second half of this week.

"Some moisture is likely to infiltrate the lower Mississippi and Tennessee valleys late this week and this weekend," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said. "That will mark an end to rain-free conditions and extreme heat in the Waverly, Tennessee, area where search, recovery, damage assessment and cleanup operations are underway."