Family watches home float away in flash floods

By Marissa Sulek

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    HICKMAN COUNTY, Tennessee (WSMV) — The flash flood damage is apparent in Humphrey’s County, but other nearby counties are also picking up the pieces. For example, a Hickman County family saw their home be uprooted by the flash floods and float down Garners Creek.

Garners Creek is clear and quiet, precisely why Glen and Cindy Hampton chose to build their house here two years ago. But after Saturday morning’s 11 inches of rain in Hickman County, their home was ripped off its foundation and ended up a couple of hundred yards away.

“It was professionally done. Everything was built to code, surveyed multiple times,” Travis Hampton, Glen and Cindy’s son, said.

Two years ago, he said he had his parents move to Hickman County from southern Illinois. They built their new home then and made sure everything was up to code. Yet, the four blocks of the foundation he made sure were in place were washed away in minutes Saturday morning.

“They could do nothing, just watched everything go,” Hampton said.

He said his parents escaped the rising waters, but the water rose so high it spun the house around and took it downstream.

“This is the front door, and when it floated down, I mean our best guess is it hit this tree and rotated and stuck with this tree here,” explains Hampton.

Now, the floodwaters cut his parents’ house in half and damaged and destroyed his family heirlooms.

“This is the desk that sat in my grandmother’s house as far as I can remember,” Hampton recalled. “You can’t replace a memory like that.”

While Hampton said they would pick up the memories, replacing a house and a home is difficult.

“It’s just something I can’t fix,” Hampton said. “I want to, they’ve done so much for me, and I can’t fix this. No matter what I do, I can’t fix this.”

Hampton said his retired parents have flood insurance, but it will only cover their mortgage. He said they are back at zero and asking anyone who can donate to their GoFundMe.

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