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Doesn't look good for the Schermerhorn Symphony Center...or the rest of Middle Tennessee for that matter.
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100 ... /100503043

This is the third symphony hall being flooded while I have been on the web (since 1999). First Dresden and Houston. I never completed my studies in civil engineering, but I still wonder, why the caretakers of costly halls and storages of costly instruments don’t plan for such situations, which are bound to happen, if the original placement wasn’t well chosen.

Not that we don’t have idiocy here also. If storms want to fill the Baltic while there is an outgoing tide, then my town will have the harbour areas flooded, which is a known experience. Still new constructions don’t have waterproof emergency gates closing automatically.

The only people handling flooding intelligently are the Dutch, but then they had a terrible lesson almost 60 years ago. I was very young, but I still remember the news on the radio.

As for the automatic gates: it is several years ago I saw how the US embassy in Copenhagen effectively controlled in- and outgoing car traffic until documentation was done. Scale up those steel plates coming up from the ground, and the water won’t enter.

Klaus

According to local news reports, the water is within 3 ' of entering the concert hall, and 15' of water RUNNING through the basement and sub-basement levels. Reports also say that the concrete is buckling. The organ console and both concert grands are destroyed. They (like most of the people washed out in this event) likely don't have flood insurance, since the worst flood prior to this one that anyone can remember (1974) did not get into downtown.

If they have that hall open in a month, I'll be shocked.

http://www.wkrn.com/global/Category.asp ... Start=true
http://www.wkrn.com/global/Category.asp ... Start=true

There is also 10' of water in the Opryland Hotel, and the Country Music HOF has experienced severe flooding.

http://www.wsmv.com/video/23435320/index.html

The Cumberland River gauge at Williams Street bridge in Nashville:



and discharge:



Amazing - the volume of water moving downstream per unit time has increased eight-fold over the course of one day.

Things are looking a little brighter in Nashville today - the flooding in the basement of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center came within 8" of the main hall. Most of the water was coming up through the drainage/sewer system (in that area of town the two systems still flow together). The way the hall is built the section flooded is mainly a large kitchen and storage area for the seating when the hall is set as a ballroom. Luckily the hall was still in concert formation. As the water continues to drop they will have a better idea of how long it will take to get the hall in full working order.

The hall was built above the highest previously recorded flood level as were many of the flooded neighborhoods in Bellevue, Franklin, Donelson & Old Hickory.

We are all looking forward to getting back to normal.

Thanks for all the info!