Tennessee flooding that sidelined NASCAR’s dirt race nothing new for Bristol family

Bobby Duncan has watched so much racing at Bristol Motor Speedway in his lifetime that he wasn’t even planning to attend this weekend’s slate of highly anticipated NASCAR races on a dirt track.

“I’ve seen good racing come and I’ve seen good racing go,” Duncan, 59, told The Observer.

Duncan said he’s still excited to watch the first Cup Series race on dirt in 51 years on television, but he’s “been to enough” Bristol races — easier for him than most considering he has lived less than a mile from the speedway for more than 20 years.

Despite his fading interest in attending races in person, Duncan and NASCAR shared the same problem this weekend: rain.

More specifically, rain waters that swelled the creek that sits behind Duncan’s house and borders parking lots adjacent to Bristol Motor Speedway — lots that became fully submerged after heavy rainfall hit northeast Tennessee overnight Saturday through Sunday afternoon.

NASCAR postponed its Cup and Truck Series races to Monday after the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning in Sullivan County, where the track is located, through Sunday morning. The sanctioning body cited safety concerns, the impact of earlier rain on the track and a bleak forecast through Sunday for its schedule change.

Familiar situation

As the industry attempted to deal with the unfortunate weather circumstances on the weekend of one of its most highly anticipated events of the year, Duncan sat on his porch on Old Thomas Bridge Road, a skinny, mile-long paved street on the southwest side of the track that leads almost directly to the speedway’s main entrance off Highway 11-E. He watched cars carrying NASCAR fans drive by as the floodwaters in his backyard rose to within a couple yards of his house.

But Duncan wasn’t panicking. He said he’d seen worse flooding than this when a major storm hit the area last year.

“I’ve seen it up here past my driveway,” Duncan said from his front porch. “We got flooded out April 13th of last year. Water was in our house from two to three feet deep.”

Duncan said his family, which includes his wife and 17-year-old daughter, suffered significant property damage — “We lost everything we had,” he said — and they just recently finalized repairs to the house and replaced furniture, thanks in part to donations from neighbors and friends, said his wife, Debbie Duncan.

“I’ve lived here 22 years and that’s the highest (the water has) come up,” said Debbie, 50.

Bobby said that he’s tried to contact officials in the city about the flooding near his house, which he said has “gotten worse” over the years, with limited success. He also said he believes he has identified two major sources contributing to the rising flood levels, which could also help the speedway and its neighboring lots in the future since the same creek that backs up to Bobby’s house circles the speedway further up the road.

“The bridge gets stopped up more. People cut more trees down. They float down the creek. They get up against that bridge and they start to create a dam,” Bobby said.

Affecting the speedway

A parking lot that holds more than a hundred vehicles during race weekends on the north side of the speedway was rendered unusable Sunday due to flooding. That lot sits between Earhart Campground East, a privately owned camping area, and the north side of the speedway. That lot also sits immediately next to the creek north of Bobby’s house.

A representative from Earhart Station LLC, which owns 100 acres of camping and parking near the speedway, including the flooded parking area, said a portion of that lot likely won’t be usable Monday either, when the races have been rescheduled to run.

“When we get extreme weather events, it definitely can flood and it has before,” the representative said, estimating that flat parking area received one to two feet of water. “ … It takes a lot of folks working together to make sure everything is handled.”

Ticket holders in that lot and the nearby campground were warned about potential floods and offered a new spot, with most people choosing to relocate Saturday night, according to an Earhart representative, who added that the company’s trucks still had to help tow a couple vehicles from the water. Bobby Duncan pointed out areas along the creek closer to his house that he believes could impact water levels closer to the speedway.

Specifically, he identified two spots further south along the creek where trees and branches catch to create a dam-like effect and raise the water levels to the north that contribute to the flooding. Those locations include a bridge a mile and a half south of his home at Stickley Farm, where the beams are built close together, and an abandoned mill off Old Beaver Creek Road another mile down, he said.

While it is difficult to measure the impact of free-flowing water in those areas on spots immediately next to the racetrack, Bobby said he was able to see the dam-like effect it created last year only a few miles from the track. He said he could stand on one side of the bridge near the farm and watch as water flowed over top of it, then move 10 feet to the other side and see how the water dropped off by seven to 10 feet.

“I’m gonna say that’s 80 percent of the problem up through here,” Bobby said. “It’s Stickley’s Bridge and Galloway’s Mill down there … It’s damming up.”

The representative from Earhart said this wasn’t something that the company had considered before, and Bobby said that last year when his house flooded he saw the areas near Bristol Motor Speedway’s ticketing office also flood.

“Right now the same thing is happening,” he said.

When asked why he’s stayed in the same home despite the nearby creek and increasing flood potential, Bobby said the answer was easy.

“My place ain’t a lot, but it’s paid for,” he said. “I pay my taxes. And all this (flooding) going on is pretty simple to remedy.

“People won’t pay no attention to me, but I know what’s going on and people won’t do nothing about it.”

This story was originally published March 29, 2021 at 7:00 AM.

Alexandra Andrejev

The Charlotte Observer

NASCAR and Charlotte FC beat reporter Alex Andrejev joined The Observer in January 2020 following an internship at The Washington Post. She is a two-time APSE award winner for her NASCAR beat coverage and National Motorsports Press Association award winner. She is the host of McClatchy’s podcast “Payback” about women’s soccer. Support my work with a digital subscription