MTAC Underwater

This weekend was expected to be uneventful for most of my family, except for my younger sister Charity Hendrix, who would be attending the Middle Tennessee Anime Convention (MTAC) in Nashville. She was booked into the Sheraton on McGavock Pike, off Briley Parkway on Friday and Saturday nights for the convention, and was to be returning home on Sunday after work.

Sunday morning, my sister called to tell us that she wasn't sure if she'd be able to make it to work, so she would probably come home after they checked out. A little while later she called again. The lower parking lot was flooding at the hotel, someone's car floating away, Briley Parkway was closed, and she would not even be able to leave the hotel.

MTAC was to end on Sunday, but most people at the fully booked hotel were unable to leave on Sunday as scheduled, due to the weather. Other guests were due to come in on Sunday evening and had reservations, so when so many people began rebooking for one more night, the hotel had to start a waiting list. Some people who stayed over didn't even know if they had a room till Sunday night. Still others were unable to secure a room for another night at all and had to find strangers willing to let them sleep on the floor of their rooms or else they stayed in the lobby or anywhere they could find to get a little rest.

"There were some people we met who went ahead and left the hotel on Sunday, even though we told them they should stay," Charity said when she was finally able to get home on Monday. "They ended up having to wade through water up to their chests, with their luggage over their heads to meet their friends." She also said that on Sunday she and her roommates "basically heard rain and sirens all day." On Monday night a coworker of Charity's, who had also attended the convention, reported that she had returned home to find she had lost nearly everything.Thankfully, our house in Maury County is on high ground, away from any creeks, rivers or other rising bodies of water. Even so, as rain once again began to fall about 1pm on Sunday, in a no more than 5 minutes, I saw the lower third of our back yard go from wet to completely submerged, so fast and heavy was the downpour and so saturated was the ground already.

Source: Personal experience and MTAC attendee Charity Hendrix