BETH: The first, the first moment where the full impact really hit us is about three days into the flood. The Bradley County rescue squad came almost to our mailbox. They came by water, by boat. They had on little frog suits with the frog things and they asked if we needed anything. And we told them that we hadn’t had any water for three days. Our water main had been severed. So we also asked them to go check on our next-door neighbors who were half a mile down the road because they were surrounded by water except for on the backside of their property. And we just wanted to make sure they were okay, because the phone lines, the land lines, were not working very well. And the cell phones only worked, on our whole street where we lived, the cell phones only worked in our front yard. So in the mornings, about 6:00 in the morning, all our neighbors would start congregating in our front yard.
And we told them we needed water, so a few hours later the Tennessee Highway Patrol helicopter, you could hear it overhead, and Danny and I were standing outside, I was on the deck, he was standing in the front yard and we waved at him, at the helicopter. And when we waved at the helicopter, he circled above our house and came over the water and then landed in the field right next to our deck. So the helicopter was loaded with water and they, we unloaded it for the neighbors, because there was how many homes on our street?
DANNY: 27?
BETH: Plus the next street over also couldn’t get out because of the water. So we unloaded the water and after that first time when we unloaded the water, when the neighbors heard the chopper wings coming close, they would all come to our house because they knew it was a water delivery.
Excerpted from: Beth and Danny Davenport Oral History Interview. Born-digital recording converted to mp3 format for online access in 2012 from 16bit 44.1khz WAV file archival master recording.
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