Governor Phil Bredesen and a dozen officials took two National Guard Blackhawk helicopters to Jackson and back Monday afternoon. Minutes after the governor landed at the 118th Airlift Wing at Berry Field in Nashville, he tolled off the list of blows stuck to Tennessee in two days of unprecedented rain.
“This is obviously a major, major event. It is very clear from the air the extent of the damage. This is going to be a long time in cleaning up.”
The Davidson County airport had measured 13.5 inches of rain Saturday and Sunday. Other areas west and south of Nashville experienced more.
Fourteen people had died. One – Carol Williamson, in Hickman County, as a result of a tornado.
The other deaths were flood related. The governor said six were in Davidson County, two each in Stewart and Perry counties, and one in Hardeman.
“We still have about 30 shelters open across the state, with a little over a thousand, about eleven hundred people in the shelters, five other shelters are on stand-by…”
Thousands of Tennesseans remain without power.
“We still have, about, in the state, about 22,000 people without power, thirteen thousand of them, thirteen-four, are in Davidson County, about 4,000 up in Montgomery County, 2,500 in Montgomery and Hardin, 1,200 in Dickson and 900 in Shelby County.”
Two reporters at the news conference nodded. They had just been trading stories about their houses being without electricity.
The governor signed and handed over his official request for a presidential disaster declaration in 52 Tennessee Counties:
Anderson, Bedford, Benton, Cannon, Carroll, Cheatham, Chester, Clay, Crockett, Davidson, Decatur, DeKalb, Dickson, Dyer, Fayette, Gibson, Giles, Hardeman, Hardin, Haywood, Henderson, Henry, Hickman, Houston, Humphreys, Jackson, Lake, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Lewis, Macon, Madison, Maury, McNairy, Montgomery, Morgan, Obion, Perry, Robertson, Rutherford, Shelby, Smith, Stewart, Sumner, Tipton, Trousdale, Van Buren, Wayne, Weakley, White, Williamson and Wilson.
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