Anonymous Donor to Pay for Funerals of All Tennessee Flood Victims

Grieving families in the wake of the Tennessee flood will not have to shoulder the burden of funeral costs thanks to one anonymous donor’s generous contribution.

“An anonymous donor has agreed to pay for the funerals of all 20 people who died in Saturday’s flooding, according to William Brown, the manager of the Humphreys County Funeral Home,” reported the Tennessean.

According to Brown, the mystery man came to his funeral home on Thursday and paid for all nine funerals he was hosting. The man also visited other funeral homes in the area and paid for those funerals as well. The Tennessean added:

The donations come as hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors across the state and nation have come to help after Saturday’s devastating flooding. The county seat, Waverly, was the epicenter of the floods, with hundreds of homes wiped out after 17 inches of rain was dumped in the area.

Of the victims, the most heart-wrenching were two 7-month old twins that were swept away by the floods. A GoFundMe page set up in their honor has raised over $100,000. The Daily Mail profiled how the tragedy unfolded:

The twins were at home with their mother, Danielle Hall, father, Matthew Rigney, and their siblings, Maleah, 5, and Brayla, 19 months, when water smashed through their apartment on Saturday morning.

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But despite his best efforts, the twins were torn from his arms, and they went under the water and disappeared, their grandmother said.

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‘I had the twins in my arms, Brayla at my hip and Maleah around my neck. The water, when it hit us just pulled us under, all of us trapped underneath a bed,’ explained Rigney.

The floods shattered records for a single day of rainfall, destroying more than 260 homes and damaging another 160. The floods also wiped out roads, cellphone towers, and telephone lines.

“As of Tuesday morning, at least 21 people were killed and 10 others missing as a result of catastrophic floods that came after 17 inches of rain fell over parts of Tennessee in a 24-hour period,” added the Mail.