Nashville services coming back after flood

NASHVILLE, May 6 (UPI) -- Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen said Thursday he was satisfied with the federal response to deadly flooding that inundated much of the state this week.

During a teleconference with reporters, Bredesen called the flooding "the black swan of weather events, just something completely unanticipated, unlike anything we've ever seen here before."

The governor said although other news events in the country, such as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the attempted car-bombing in New York, may have diverted public attention from the situation in Tennessee, he is "very, very pleased" with the Obama administration's response.

Bredesen declined to throw out a preliminary damage estimate, saying he wanted to wait until a formal assessment was made.

"But we're dealing with some pretty serious issues down here," Bredesen said.

"But so far things are moving smoothly. I think we're digging out, but this will take a long time before Tennessee is back to normal."

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, who said damage in his city could surpass $1 billion, also expressed satisfaction with the state and federal governments' responses. He said the projection was for high waters in the region to fall back to flood level "probably tomorrow (Friday)." But he noted schools and roads were still closed, and the search for any more victims was ongoing.

"Right now we're going door to door, trying to determine if there's anybody in some of the buildings that were totally submerged," Dean said. "And that's taking some time, though we're getting it done. We're beginning the recovery process."

Joe Becker, senior vice president for disaster relief at the American Red Cross, said his agency has volunteers from 37 states "fanned out across the state of Tennessee" to meet people's emergency needs for shelter, food and other supplies.

"But let's be clear here. This is going to be a long slog," Becker said.

FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said his agency had received about 8,500 phone registrations from flood victims seeking help.

Bredesen acknowledged there "is some frustration" among local officials in other flood-stricken communities in the state.

"I mean, I've had some county mayors on the phone wanting to know why this hasn't happened yet and so on, but that's normal and reasonable," he said, adding "we're helping these counties as best we can."

The death toll across the Southeast from the weekend storms remained 28 Wednesday, CNN reported. Nineteen of the deaths are in Tennessee.

As Nashville started to dry out Thursday, the Country Music Hall of Fame was expected to reopen before week's end.

Nashville "will remain Music City and we will go forward doing what we've been doing," Dean said.

Country singer Kenny Chesney, who's called Nashville home for more than a decade, said, "People have lost everything."

"I lost a lot but not near as much as a lot of people," he said.

"We all saw what happened in Haiti and we all saw what happened all over the world. These people need just bare essentials here in Nashville."