MEMPHIS, Tenn. — It's almost like you can’t catch a break.
Flash floods from Friday's storms have some residents in a bind battling whether to leave or stay. For others, they said they don’t see how anything can help the situation.
“This is nature. Ain’t nothing you can do about nature. Mother nature comes, you’ve got to deal with it as she comes,” said Rezelle Foster, a Memphis resident who has lived in the Bethel Grove area for nearly 30 years.
Early Friday morning, flash floods poured through Browning Avenue in the Bethel Grove neighborhood. James Danford, a resident in that area, woke up to a flooded home.
“I thought I was in a dream,” said Danford. “I got up and turned on my flashlight on. I’ve got six inches of water right in front of my couch. What the heck?”
Danford lives right near a ditch that fills when it rains. “Four brick layers of water and all the way up to the frame rail of my truck just sitting,” said Danford. “I’ve got dirt, mud, bugs, everything.”
Just a few homes down from Danford, his neighbor, Stacy Hayes, said it was the same. “When I was in the house, it felt like you could swim in the house,” said Hayes. “The water was so high, the porch was covered. It’s never been that high before.”
When there is heavy rain, Rezelle Foster’s home is normally in the clear. “But not this time. This time, it got all the way to my front porch,” said Foster. “The drainage is not big enough, so it overfills.”
The City of Memphis Public Works director, Robert Knecht, said that is a big part of the issue. “Flash flooding is always an issue, because our drainage systems are only designed to handle so much rain, storm water,” said Knecht.
The other issue has been fallen trees and debris from the last storm. “We had about 40 Trees knocked down this last storm, we had to go out, cut them up,” said Knecht. “The things we're doing here is part of our master planning is to look at what options the city can do if there is a issue of flooding.”
At the end of the day, mother nature is mother nature. ”There will always be a storm that we're that we will not be able to contain,” said Knecht.
“I’m just happy because it could’ve been worse,” said Danford.
Knecht also said part of the master plan is prioritizing certain areas based on if flooding actually got into homes and whether or not it is a repeated occurrence. When it comes to declaring an area a flood zone, Knecht said that is up to FEMA.