San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Flooded town facing dilemma over rebuilding
WAVERLY, Tenn. — In the 100 years that Jim Traylor’s family had lived in his house in rural Waverly, it hadn’t once flooded. The normally shallow Trace Creek where he had fished and swam as a kid had never crossed the one-lane road that separated it from his home.
That changed on Aug. 21, when more than 17 inches of rain just upstream transformed the usually placid waterway into a roiling river that rushed into his house and devastated the town, killing 20 people before it receded.
The water was already halfway up his tires by the time the 79-year-old decided to flee.
“Sitting here in the car and just watching it, how fast it was coming this way — it’d blow your mind,” he said recently. “It’s unreal. You can’t imagine.”
Traylor’s family got out safe, dogs and all, but the home his grandfather bought in 1921 may have seen its last days, barring help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He doesn’t have the money to repair it and doesn’t want a loan.
“At (almost) 80 years old, I can’t see it,” Traylor said. “I’d love to save the old house. That’s why I put so much money into it. Because it was home.”
A hundred years ago, the huge flood would have been seen as a fluke of nature, a once-in-a-lifetime event. Residents could have built back without fear. But today, climate change is making the type of flood-producing rainfall that inundated Waverly more common,
A damaged home with messages painted on it sits empty after a devastating flood hit Waverly, Tenn., on Aug. 21. More than 500 homes and 50 businesses were damaged.
experts say.
And so now, the roughly 4,000 people who live there face a dilemma. With more than 500 homes and 50 businesses damaged, Waverly will probably see major losses in property and sales tax revenue even as it prepares to spend millions on debris removal and infrastructure repairs. If those homes and businesses don’t return, the town could slowly
die.
But if they build back along the creek, are they risking another disaster?
Janey Smith Camp, a Vanderbilt University engineering professor, said there are a number of options for communities that risk a repeat of devastating floods, including the need to “really think about whether or not it makes sense to rebuild in some areas.”
“I fully realize that we’re talking about people’s lives, their homes — and some of them may be multi-generational,” Camp said. “It’s a tough thing to swallow. But there’s a point that we need to start saying, ‘It’s not safe to live here anymore.’ ”