The Aftermath: Cleaning Up East Ridge After the Flood

The East Ridge Retirement Center stays closed- contaminated with raw sewage. Some residents get help from Salvation Army workers called in from Nashville.  Ron Harmon is the Disaster Coordinator for Nashville Salvation Army.  "They told us to come over here and entertain them and feed them and to keep them out of trouble if we can," Harmon said Wednesday.  "Got one lady down here who wants to play poker with me."

But others have a lot of hard work ahead of them. Workers at Campers World spent the morning moving RVs back into the parking lot after moving them to higher ground yesterday. They just have to wait for the water to recede.

Sherry Taylor is the owner of the Off the Rack thrift store on Ringgold Road. "The smell. It's been hard to get rid of the smell," she said.  Off the Rack lost around $3,000 of merchandise to flooding.  Jackie Anderson explains what they're doing to clean the store now. "We're trying right now to air out the store and save what we can so that's how it goes," she said.

East Ridge Mayor Mike Steele says he's been working closely with Zach Wamp's office as well as Hamilton County Mayor Claude Ramsey.  "We're doing everything we can to reach out and to first of all raise the flag and say we have an issue here what can you do to help?"

What makes this flood different is the flash flooding that happened before the creek rose. Stores here in Osborne Center flooded this year that haven't had any water damage from floods of years' past.

Mayor Steele adds, "We had to go in there and cut power down for a period of time. Houses that are below in that area and that's not a traditional area you see."

Mayor Steele says city crews are working to see what percentage of the city flooded, how much personal and commercial property got damaged, and how much city revenue was used for overtime.