Not so long ago, Nature Trail hummed with life. Lawn mowers snarled at the grass, air conditioners hissed at the heat. People sat on their decks and welcomed dusk while their kids yipped and ran and left toys in the yards.
Today, a house near the corner of Nature Trail and Egret Court is empty, the front door nailed shut. Across the street, a home’s open garage exposes a floor caked with dirt. A few doors down, a neglected yard, wild and weedy, is proof that no one lives there.
When Jackie Garland drives down the road now, she tries not to look at all the empty houses. “It’s too depressing,” she said.
A year ago Tuesday, life on the Nature Trail changed. On Sept. 21, 2009, Sweetwater Creek broke from its banks, and the residential street lay in its way. The swollen creek took sofas and appliances and girls’ dolls. It upended cars. It robbed homes of family photos and Bibles, TV sets and little toy trucks.
It left Garland and her neighbors shaken, afraid. They weren’t in a flood zone, according to insurance and government records. Their homes were supposed to safe, but they weren’t.
Nature Trail was just one street out of hundreds, perhaps thousands, in a disaster that affected the metro region and beyond. From the mountains to areas south of Atlanta, homes and businesses were inundated with stormwater. People lost electric power, their belongings and, in a few cases, their lives.
Ten people died in the flood. The water forced thousands to flee. More than 2,000 homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed. About 10,000 volunteers fanned across the Atlanta area to deliver food, take applications for financial aid or to pray with the frightened and discouraged. The state insurance commissioner estimates losses hit $500 million. One federal official called the flood “epic.”
Today, the flood is a footnote in Atlanta history, but it’s more than that on Nature Trail. When the water receded, it took with it a community’s identity.
It was a neighborhood where young families with youngsters and older folks whose kids were grown mingled happily. Neighbors lingered over barbecue grills and discussed events. They collectively watched over the neighborhood kids.
Some think shared tragedy has brought them closer. Others worry the chemistry is permanently altered now.
Garland wonders if her community can bounce back.
“This,” she reminisced, “was such a nice neighborhood.”
Love was all around
This was their dream home. In 1998, Frank and Beverly Lovett watched crews build their two-story home on Nature Trail, on a lot they’d chosen, using plans they’d selected. “We watched it go up brick-by-brick,” said Frank Lovett.
A home full of love. Their two sons grew to adulthood in the house. They moved away, but came back with children in tow. Frank Lovett converted part of the basement into a family room to accommodate his growing family.
When the rains came in mid-September, the Lovetts didn’t worry about it. Sweetwater Creek, a couple of hundred yards away, had risen before, but they’d remained dry. They had no flood insurance — didn’t need it, agents said. They weren’t in a flood zone.
But flooding is what Frank Lovett saw the morning of Sept. 21. After his wife, a teacher, had gone to work, he looked out his front door. Sweetwater Creek, brown and big, was coming, coming fast. He checked an hour later; it had moved 100 yards closer.
Lovett jumped in his ’92 Suburban, a gleaming, black machine that does not look its age, and drove away fast. He called his wife and said the neighborhood was in trouble. She met him that afternoon at a son’s house, where they spent the next five days.
When he returned to their house, an anxious Frank Lovett beheld a neighborhood he barely recognized. The sidewalks on Nature Trail were impassable, jammed with ruined furniture, clothing, appliances, toys, food and other items water had turned to mush. The community reeked of moldy fabric and sodden carpet. The sun baked everything.
The Lovetts entered their house and stared: a 5-foot-high ring of crud, where the creek had stained their walls; the ruined floor; the demolished family room they’d just finished. Frank Lovett reached for his phone.
Family members came quickly. They brought food and water and power tools. They cut away ruined drywall and ripped out worthless carpet. A lifetime’s collection of things, the practical as well as sentimental, wound up on the curb.
“Family photos,” recalled Frank Lovett. “Gone, and irreplaceable.”
A representative from the Federal Emergency Management Agency showed up not long after the flood receded. The next week, the Lovetts got a check for $15,000.
An insurance adjuster wasn’t as accommodating. “He said this was an act of God, and that wasn’t covered,” said Frank Lovett. “Eleven years, I’ve been paying insurance ...” his voice trailed off. So they reached into their savings and paid for the repairs themselves.
Now, when rain falls, Beverly Lovett looks out the window. She wakes in the middle of the night.
The creek came once, she tells her husband. It can come again.
Water from everywhere
Metro Atlanta had never seen anything like it. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates 18 to 22 inches of rain fell on west Cobb, Paulding and Douglas counties Sept. 18 to Sept. 22. The region averages about 50 inches a year.
The water came from the sky, certainly, but it also came from upstream — from parking lots and roof runoff miles away.
“There was lots of water coming from everywhere,” said Austell Mayor Joe Jerkins.
The mayor, 68, is a native of Austell. He grew up on the banks of Sweetwater, laying trot lines for catfish and gigging frogs. Until that morning a year ago, Jerkins thought he had seen the creek in all its moods, from placid to furious.
“But I never saw anything like that,” he said.
The flood hit Austell hard, damaging or ruining about 700 homes.
Neighborhood in ruins
The home at 4860 Nature Trail seemingly has it all — four bedrooms, three baths, two-car garage. A screened-in back porch that looks out on a wooded lot.
Two years ago, it sold for $172,130. Two weeks ago, it went for $40,075.
Lion Tail Realty handled the sale for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which held the mortgage on the 10-year-old home until the owner defaulted. The house, said sales agent Andy Petzinger, underscores the effects of two unfortunate events — the flood and recession.
“A lot of the homes [damaged by the flood] look pretty good from the street,” said Petzinger, a Realtor since 2004. “Then you open the door and walk in.”
Russ Danser had that reaction when he and his wife, Susan, came back to their home on Nature Trail a week after it flooded. The furniture, ruined; the floor, caked with mud; their appliances, scattered about as if they were discarded playground toys.
Danser got out his laptop, logged on to Facebook and sent out a plea: “I need everybody who can to help me,” he wrote. He augmented his posting with photos of the family’s ground-floor dining room and kitchen.
Friends responded. As with the Lovetts, they came with food and power tools, cutting away the flood’s damages. One buddy who runs a company that rents inflatable gym sets for kids’ parties donated blowers to dry out the house; another brought generators to power their tools.
The Dansers — husband, wife and three small children — would spend two months with Susan Danser’s parents while friends and relatives toiled on their home. When they moved back to their house in early December, Russ Danser smiled the sort of smile reserved for a guy who’s just finished an eight-week visit with the in-laws.
“I was ready to move back,” Danser said.
He and his wife thought about leaving, Danser said, but chose to stay.
One reason is financial: They owe about $160,000 on the home; Danser figures it’s worth half that.
Another is personal. Nature Trail is where they live.
“If we were going to walk away, we would have already done it,” said Danser, whose neighbors recently chose him to head the subdivision’s homeowner association. “This place is coming back.”
It has a long way to go. He estimated that 30 percent of 144 homes in Cypress Cove and sister community, Cypress Club, are empty. Danser expects that percentage to drop as the great flood of 2009 recedes in memory.
“It was like a mini-Katrina here,” said Danser, referring to the 2005 hurricane and flooding that crippled New Orleans. “This was a 500-year flood.”
Blame more than the rain
What happened on Nature Trail is testimony to what occurs when planning doesn’t keep pace with development, said Dan Reuter, chief of the land-use division of the Atlanta Regional Commission. The nonprofit agency is an advisory and planning organization for a 10-county region that includes Austell.
Developers, he said, alter the landscape. They create driveways and parking lots, roofs and other surfaces impervious to rainwater.
“And we’ve had subdivisions built all over the place,” he said.
An AJC investigation confirms Reuter’s observation. In a five-part series in February, the AJC revealed that rain alone wasn’t to blame for the ruined homes on Nature Trail and elsewhere. Development, augmented with poor planning and intergovernmental cooperation, created a landscape where excess water had no place to go other than people’s homes.
The ARC, said Reuter, has participated in a series of talks about how to improve the region’s ability to weather another flood and is continuing to meet with various agencies. They want to enhance communications between municipalities and other organizations to reduce flooding in the future, he said.
“We’ve made some progress,” he said. “But we still have some exposure” to flooding.
Willing to gamble
Archie Alexander may be the new face of Nature Trail. He recently bought a fine house on the street, a two-bedroom structure with a neat front yard. It’s his first home, and he paid $45,000.
Yes, he knows about the flood. A native of Columbus, Alexander, 38, was living in the area last year. He saw the images on TV.
“That was, what? A 500-year flood?” he asked. “I’ll worry about [flooding] if I’m around 500 years from now.”
Salman Khan might be willing to make the same gamble as Alexander. A Kennesaw resident, he was eating lunch with a friend recently when he learned about the abandoned homes on Nature Trail. It was a warm day and he had time on his hands; Khan came to Austell to see for himself. He’s thinking of buying one of the storm-damaged houses as an investment.
Others living on Nature Trail may not be as confident. It’s hard to erase the memories of cars floating away, of garage doors buckling under tons of water. Of homes turned inside-out.
It’s hard to hear raindrops on the roof, and not worry.
How it happened
● A low-pressure system formed over the lower Mississippi Valley on Sept. 14, 2009, then rolled over metro Atlanta, touching off the first of eight days of rainfall. The totals were stunning in an area with an average annual rainfall of 52 inches — Kennesaw, 20.3 inches; Lawrenceville, 19.32 inches; Marietta, 18.9 inches; and Douglasville, 18.18 inches. Lake Lanier rose 4 feet in 48 hours.
● Grounds became saturated and stormwater poured off roofs, parking lots and other impervious surfaces.
● Aged storm drains weren’t adequate to carry such a volume.
● The rain fed into swollen rivers and creeks, including four creeks that are tributaries of Sweetwater Creek.
● Near Nature Trail, Sweetwater Creek crested at 30.07 feet. The previous record: 21.81 feet.
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