Life Goes On in Nashville - Sort Of
May
11
Written by:
5/11/2010 9:22 AM
We had planned before the flood to meet friends at the Nashville Jazz Workshop on Friday night, and since the venue was on high ground, and accessible, the show went on - but the door went to flood relief. Despite the well-publicized loss of musical instruments in the SoundCheck building, music goes on in the Music City, and benefit concerts are springing up all over. MusiCares estimates that only a small fraction of musicians have adequate flood insurance to cover losses, and this seems to be the case with most residents. The results of CERF+'s Business Insurance Survey reinforces that notion. It showed that 70% of craft artists responding to the survey were not covered for business losses - and one would expect even fewer have flood insurance. CERF+ provides assistance to professional craft artists who have had a career-threatening emergency.
The 39th annual TACA Spring Craft Fair was this weekend. Ironically, after two straight mudfests, it was a perfect weekend - not a cloud in the sky, and temperatures unseasonably, but not unpleasantly cool. TACA invited the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee and the Second Harvest Food Bank to share their space in Centennial Park to collect relief supplies. I went out Saturday to drop off a small supply of Studio Protector wall guides to be sold to benefit the CERF+ TACA Fund, a special fund to benefit Tennessee craft artists who have suffered career-threatening emergencies.
Depending on the route you took to the fair, it might look like nothing had happened here. The geography in Middle Tennessee is hills and hollows, so unlike New Orleans or the Mississippi Gulf Coast after Katrina, the destruction took place in more isolated pockets, often just out of sight.
My route to Nashville from Kingston Springs took me through the community of Shacklett, along the Harpeth River. In better times, people flock to the canoe rentals to canoe down this scenic river. But now, the scene is reminiscent of what I saw after Katrina.
Houses were washed off of the foundations and across the highway.
Clothes and posessions were hanging from tree limbs.
There were strange arrangements of objects strewn around,
And houses had been gutted, looking like they had thrown up their innards onto the front lawn.
Current loss estimates in Nashville are in the $1-2 billion range for the cleanup.
Emotional Recovery
I got a call yesterday from a young furniture maker whose neighborhood was hit hard. He had just been to the funeral of a neighbor who had drowned in the flood. His own damage was not severe, but he was trying to cope with what he saw around him. He was upset that the flood was not getting more national attention-drowned out, so to speak, by coverage of the oil spill catastrophe mounting in the gulf, and the failed Times Square bombing attempt. It is a reminder of the emotional stress that a whole community bears after a disaster such as this. People have a need to have their story told. The words of artists I met after Katrina still ring in my ears, "Tell them what you saw here." A section on the Studio Protector Online Guide deals with emotional recovery.
Equipment for Rent
On a positive note, my friends with the flooded studio called, and were finally able to get some industrial strength dehumidifiers to begin drying out the building. It seems that there is a lot of competition and a defacto rationing of such equipment after a flood. I had seen trucks full of equipment queued up in a shopping center parking lot, and stopped to ask the security guard about it. Kim called the company, and it turns out that there were such concentration yards in strategic locations around town, one a few miles from them, and they were able to rent the equipment they needed.
Warnings have been issued for residents and businesses to be wary of post-disaster scams. The Studio Protector Online Guide has an article on this topic.