Water Damage Restoration
Storm & Flood Cleanup
The rivers here were engineered to move water off quickly. The Mississippi can still hold it in place for a week.
Call (901) 459-6565 Water Damage Restoration
- Part of
- Water Damage Restoration
- Region
- West Tennessee
- Counties
- 21
- Covered ZIP codes
- 171
A second opinion costs one more phone call, and on a job of any size it usually repays the twenty minutes it takes.
Nearly every river in the region was straightened. The West Tennessee Tributaries Project, authorized in 1948, channelized more than a fifth of the 350 miles of stream in the Obion and Forked Deer basin; the Corps dropped the channel thirty feet in 1963, a federal judge halted the work in May 1972, and a consent agreement followed in 1985. The Hatchie is the exception at 238 miles — the longest free-flowing tributary of the lower Mississippi and a Class I Natural River Area since 12 February 1970, still a slow meandering swamp river with many oxbows. A straightened channel does not hold a storm; it hands it downstream faster.
So flood water shows up here in two shapes. One is fast and local: about seven inches of rain on 16 February 2025 put the river gauge at 39.8 feet against a flood stage of 34, a levee gave way at Rives and nearly the whole town evacuated. The other runs backward — Nonconnah Creek drains roughly half of the city and reverses whenever the Mississippi tops 40 feet on the Memphis gauge, which is only moderate stage on a river that crested at 48.70 feet in February 1937 and 48.03 in May 2011. The first leaves silt and a quick crest. The second leaves days of standing water in ground that had nowhere left to put it.
What people notice first
- A silt line on the wall marking how high the water stood
- Foundation vents packed with debris and wet batts above them
- Subfloor still soft a week after the yard drained
- Mud inside the ductwork running under the floor
- Water gone from the yard but still standing under the house
How the work runs
Make it safe before entering
Power stays off until the panel and the circuits in the wet area have been looked at, and gas appliances that went underwater are not relit. Flood water hides what it moved: displaced steps, a washed-out footing, a floor with silt over a hole in it. The first pass through the building is an inspection, not a cleanup.
Pump out and muck out
Standing water is pumped or extracted, then the silt is shoveled and washed out while it is still wet, because dried river mud has to be chipped off. Crawl spaces are done at the same time as the rooms, not after. What comes out gets photographed and listed for the claim as it leaves.
Remove what the flood contaminated
River and storm-sewer water is treated as contaminated, so pad, wet wallboard, batt insulation and particleboard come out well above the water line. Solid materials that can be cleaned stay. Flood-soaked ductwork under a floor is usually replaced rather than washed, because the interior surfaces cannot be reached.
Wash and dry the structure
Framing, subfloor and masonry are cleaned by physical removal, rinsed, and then treated per label before drying equipment goes in. Dehumidification runs in the crawl space as well as the living space, since the ground under the house holds the water longest. Readings from marked points decide when to pull equipment, not the calendar.
Deal with the ground and the grade
A house that took backwater once will take it again, but a house that took roof runoff or a blocked ditch does not have to. Downspout extensions, a regraded low corner, cleared vents and a sealed crawl space cover are cheap next to a second cleanup. The permanent fixes get separated from the emergency ones so nobody pays for the wrong thing twice.
Windows and doors are checked for their own leaks before a roof is blamed, because a ceiling stain and the actual entry point are rarely in the same place.
What this looks like in West Tennessee
Most of the water that floods a building in these counties is moving through a channel somebody dug. The Loosahatchie has been straightened along almost all of its 64 miles, and the West Tennessee Tributaries Project of 1948 reworked better than a fifth of the 350 stream miles draining the Obion and Forked Deer before a federal judge halted it in May 1972, with a consent agreement closing the matter in 1985. Engineered reaches crest fast and fall fast. The gauges agree: on the South Fork every crest above 40 feet predates 1965, while the Mississippi record at Tiptonville, 48.35 feet, was set on 5 May 2011.
Cleanup after wind and high water is scheduled around electricity as much as around the water itself. A storm that opens roofs takes the grid down with it, and this region has seen that at scale: about 339,000 customers lost supply on 22 July 2003, better than 80 percent of one system and the largest outage that utility has recorded. Crews plan to run generators and to work a first day without site lighting. One municipal utility covers all of Shelby County for power, while elsewhere the distributor is small and sets its own restoration order, so reconnection is a county-by-county question rather than a regional one.
Storm & Flood Cleanup by town
A postal code that covers a post office box rather than houses is still on the sheet, and the tables here show it rather than quietly dropping it.
The rest of water damage restoration
- Emergency Water ExtractionTruck-mounted and portable extraction, then a drying plan with a target.
- Frozen & Burst Pipe DamageSplit supply lines, the repair and the drying after.
- Sewage Backup RestorationSoiled material out, surfaces cleaned and disinfected, structure dried.
- Slab Leak Water DamageThe wet carpet is rarely above the leak; this is how it gets found.
- Appliance Leak CleanupThe four supply lines in a house that nobody has a service date for.
- Crawl Space Water RemovalWater and saturated material taken out from under the house.
- The First Hour After a Water LossWhat to do, in order, in the first hour of a water loss in a West Tennessee house.
Questions that come up
Is river flooding covered by homeowners insurance?
Generally not. Surface water entering a building is the exclusion that flood insurance exists to fill, whether it came from a river, a creek or several inches of rain with nowhere to drain. Rain blown through a roof opened by wind is a different question and often is covered. Read the declarations page before assuming either way, and open the claim regardless so the carrier makes the determination.
How is flood water different from a burst pipe?
Contamination and silt. Clean supply water can frequently be dried where it lies, flooring and wallboard left where they are, while river water brings whatever the channel was carrying and leaves a layer of fines in every cavity it entered. That is why the removal line on a flood job sits above the water mark, and why the cleaning step comes before the drying step.
How high does the river have to get?
It depends entirely on which river. The Hatchie near Bolivar has a flood stage of 18 feet and has passed it in 2001, 2002, 2010, 2011, 2019, 2021 and 2025, against a record of 21.53 feet set on 15 February 1948. The Tennessee River at Savannah runs a flood stage of 370 feet and reached 395.3 on 26 February 2019, short of the 401.2 recorded in March 1897. Local gauge readings are the number to watch, not a regional forecast.
Can we move back in once the water drops?
Water leaving the yard is not the same as a dry building, and the crawl space typically stays wet long after the rooms look normal. The South Fork Forked Deer at Jackson gives the idea: a flood stage of 34 feet, a modern crest of 38.76 in May 2010, and a river bottom that stays saturated well after the gauge falls. Get the power checked, the structure looked at and the moisture readings taken before anyone unpacks.
Before you call
Ring before you start pulling carpet. Carpet that comes up in one piece can often go back down; carpet torn out in strips almost never does, and the difference is a claim line.