When the Caney Fork comes up: a flood timeline from 2024
Hour-by-hour, what one DIRT household did when the river rose 14 feet in 30 hours. The decisions that worked and the ones we'd take back.
The river started rising on a Tuesday afternoon. By Wednesday morning it was 4 feet over normal. By Wednesday night, 14. We had 30 hours of notice and we used about 22 of them. Here's what that looked like.
T-30 hours, the gauge at Center Hill said 12 feet and rising. We moved both vehicles to the high shoulder of Hwy 70. That was the easiest decision we made all week. Everything else was harder.
T-18, the breakers came off the well pump and the basement subpanel. We bagged the medications — every prescription, the EpiPen, the kid's inhaler — into a single dry bag. If you remember nothing else from this piece, remember that one. The medications go in first.
T-6, the kids went to grandma's in Cookeville. We confirmed the pickup by text, then by phone, then by driving them halfway and meeting Aunt R. at the truck stop. Three confirmations is two too many until you actually need it.
What we'd take back: not staging the sandbags sooner. We had 12 bags in the shed for two years and stacked them at T-2 instead of T-12. By T-2 the wind was up and we lost an hour to safety. The right answer was: stage them when you stage the medications.
What worked: the radio. NOAA 162.475 ran the whole time on a $30 hand-crank, and when we lost power for 14 hours the radio was the only thing in the house that knew what was happening. Buy the radio.