Professional Reprographics

www.perezhilton.com

A Taliban Terrorist working for a foreign branch of BP Oil took flying lessons and seeded the rain clouds above Nashville causing the flooding that did over $1 Billion in damage and took the lives of over 30 area residents.

Now if that is what had happened last week, the Nashville Flood would have been front page everywhere.

Sadly, our tragic story was barely played outside of Nashville. I talked to people all week from other cities who had no idea it had flooded in Nashville.

The national media chose to largely ignore our  disaster. A Google News search shows 8,390 hits for “Times Square bomb” and 13,800 for “BP oil spill.” “Nashville flood,” on the other hand, returns only 2,430 results—many of them local.  As Betsy Phillips of the Nashville Scene writes, “it was mind-boggling to flip by CNN, MSNBC, and FOX on Sunday afternoon and see not one station even occasionally bringing their viewers footage of the flood, news of our people dying.”

Why?

Shockingly offensive media bias. If a flood 1/10th the size had happened in New York, it would have gotten far larger play. The Nashville Floods are an intense national disaster. As Bob Sellers of the Huffington Post writes:

“It wasn’t just the weak. There was the family of three sitting in their living room one moment and fighting the current of a raging creek the next as it swept their house away. The woman who survived lost a home, a husband, and a teenage daughter in a matter of a few terrifying minutes.

It wasn’t just people. There was the horse found 14 miles downstream, the cow stuck in a tree, and the description from a livestock owner of hearing his horses taking a deep breath and the sound of bubbles seconds later as the rising water stole life from them.

It’s wasn’t just flooding. One of Nashville’s two water treatment plants went down, meaning drinking water sources became critically low. Rising flood waters threatened the remaining water plant, so prison inmates were deployed to pack sandbags around the only remaining source of fresh water.

It wasn’t over when the rain stopped. There were sunny skies shining down upon the 10-year old girl who was playing in the water in the ditch near her house when she lost her footing and was sucked into a drain pipe 18 inches wide. When she was spit out of the other end of the 36 foot long pipe she wasn’t breathing and her lips were blue. As her father picked her up to begin CPR she opened her eyes and gasped for air.

It wasn’t without controversy. The Army Corps of Engineers made choices in releasing water from local dams that critics say left certain homes dry, and others uninhabitable. Some of the flood victims thought they had survived the storm until the water around their homes started rising at a breathtaking pace with no warning.

It wasn’t just bad news. There was the baby born to the mother who couldn’t get to the hospital, with an obstetrician forging waist deep water. There were hundreds of water rescues by people who own boats, calling out loud from house to house for survivors who needed a life-saving link to dry land. These good Samaritans included a young man on a jet ski who saved a woman whose house was fully engulfed in flames as she pondered whether to die in raging waters or burn to death with her home. Twenty seconds after they raced away from the flames the entire house exploded. “God sent me an angel on a jet ski,” she said.”

No news coverage means fewer people know about the folks here in Nashville who lost their homes, their cars, their businesses and even their lives. The fewer people who know about the flood, the fewer donations for those who really need them, the slower aid flows in and the slower it will take the government to respond.

I don’t know about you but I’m sick of hearing about the oil spill in the gulf and I’m tired of hearing about Faisal Shahzad. Don’t get me wrong – the oil spill is horrible and I’m really happy Shahzad was caught but I find the media coverage of the flood a natural disaster in itself.

What do you think?

To donate to flood victims, click here.