Even as the rivers of Middle and West Tennessee are returning to their pre-flood levels, damage estimates are rising rapidly. Nashville Mayor Karl Dean (D) on May 11 raised the damage estimate for the city to $1.56 billion, with 99% of the private sector having been inspected. Absent from the total are public buildings and infrastructure damaged by torrential rain that fell on May 1 and 2.
David Penn, director of the Business and Economic Research Center at Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, expects the final tally be closer to $2 billion. “I don’t know if we’ll ever know, since so many losses are not insured,” he says. Across the state, officials say it’s too soon to tell.