For Stephanie Farmer and her daughter Kasondra, the world is divided into B.F. and A.F.
Before the flood. After the flood.
Before the flood, they had a home near the banks of Richland Creek. They had furniture, and family photos and rooms filled with 18 years’ worth of memories. Even after a year, they sometimes find themselves searching for something – a journal, a toy, a pair of shoes – and realize that was something they had B.F. And now it’s gone.
It was a year ago today(may 1) that the torrential rain began, leading to historic, 1,000-year flooding.
For a while after the flood, it seemed this community would never get back to what it was before. Before the water came creeping in the back doors of the honky-tonks, before the Cumberland River swallowed the Titans’ stadium and the Grand Ole Opry stage in one gulp, before flooding gutted thousands of homes and businesses, turned 54 counties into disaster areas, and robbed 24 of their lives.