2010 Nashville flood: all relief is local

Alison Groves reflects on being neighborly through crisis:

Enough has been said about the flood so I won’t go into generalities of that ..., but there is one thing I do want to get out there that I haven’t seen many people talking about.

Your neighborhood.

Tonight, I met up with a few of my neighbors, most of who were complete strangers to me, to hand out food and drinks to folks in the neighborhood who were cleaning out their homes from the flood. The first woman we came across asked us who we were with and when we stated we were just neighbors wanting to make sure everyone was ok, she burst into tears. She told us no one else had been back there yet to help out, and she was so thankful that we had stopped by. I was so blown away by the fact that no one had bothered to walk a block or two over to check on their neighbors and make sure everyone was ok.

I don’t want to diminish the amazing volunteer effort that is going on in this town, for it is something I’ve truly never seen before. I just want to remind people that almost everyone we know was affected by the flood, and those people could be living next door to us or on the next street over.