Army Corps Claims Actions Reduced Tennessee Flooding in May

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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has concluded its actions during the May floods reduced the Cumberland River’s flood crest in Nashville by 5 feet, but the agency suffered numerous communications problems during the crisis, according to a report.

The corps and National Weather Service have been criticized for not providing the public enough warning about the severity of the floods that killed 22 people in Tennessee and caused over $2 billion in damage in Nashville alone. Record two-day rains swelled the Cumberland River and caused it to crest at 51.86 feet on May 3.

“At the height of the event, Corps personnel were making minute-by-minute decisions for the operation of eight projects in an extremely dynamic and dangerous environment,” the 300-page “After Action Review” says.

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander held a hearing to probe the Corps’ actions during the flood. Among those testifying was U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-5th, who was critical of the preliminary report. Cooper said “the Corps makes some additional mistakes in the report itself,” including a statement that “Metro Center” had been flooded when it had not.

The report identified serious communication problems inside the Corps. An e-mail from the Nashville office sent before the floods about what it was doing to prepare was overlooked. There was no policy to follow up with a phone call. Early on, internal communications were poor, in part because flooding there displaced a logistics office in the Memphis area. When the Nashville office lost its Internet service, it also lost the ability to electronically analyze data about the reservoirs that was being collected by hand.

The report also said river gauge information collected by the U.S. Geological Survey wasn’t available because the Nashville corps office left a cooperative program five years ago over budget concerns. The office was understaffed because it was the weekend and once the weather turned bad many workers couldn’t get back into the office.

All sandbag requests couldn’t be met, although sandbagging efforts by the Corps and the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency helped keep one Nashville water treatment plant operating after another one was flooded.