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Excerpt 2 from Michael Sullivan Oral History Interview, 2011 August 27

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Excerpt 2 from Michael Sullivan Oral History Interview, 2011 August 27

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Title	Excerpt 2 from Michael Sullivan Oral History Interview, 2011 August 27
Personal name	Sullivan, Michael--Interviews
Topical entry	Rescue Emergency management--Planning--Nashville (Tenn.) Natural disasters--Nashville (Tenn.) Storytelling--Nashville (Tenn.) Oral history--Sources Oral history--Library resources Rescue work CPR (First aid) Police--Nashville (Tenn.)--History Local government leaders--Nashville (Tenn.)
Geographic entry	Nashville (Tenn.)--Floods Nashville (Tenn.)--History--21st century Nashville (Tenn.)--History--Sources
Description	Excerpt from an oral history interview with Michael Sullivan, conducted on August 27, 2011 by Annette Pilcher as part of the Flood 2010 Digital History Project. Michael talks about his experience performing rescues during the May 2010 flood. The complete interview is available in the Special Collections Division.
Transcript	PILCHER: About how many, can you calculate how many people you actually rescued during that time? SULLIVAN: Well— PILCHER: I know rescue’s a nebulous term. SULLIVAN: Yeah. And it’s, it’s rescued from what? Maybe from life-threatening situations: 4 or 5. We had a lot of people that they were put in positions where they rescued more. I’m grateful that I didn’t have to encounter that because I know they had some emotional stuff from that. We had people that were plucked off of the tops of their cars; we had people that were, one person had to reach out with a tree limb to grab someone floating down the flood water, floating down this area that, it was like a miniature river. We had one of our volunteer members, who was brand-new, he had been in for all of two months and was exposed to all that. He was out there and he actually had two people die on him. They, it was an elderly couple, and they were in a vehicle that had been submerged; they were able to get them out of the vehicle, and he was performing CPR on them for 20 minutes, couldn’t revive them. So he was torn up about it. Rescuing, I don’t know, I encounter thousands of people. I was able to help a lot of people in a lot of different ways. If not just being out there and being a presence and showing people that there are people out here if something goes wrong. If you encounter something, you’re there. There were a lot of people that did helluva lot more than I did and I’m grateful I didn’t have to stand in their shoes at the time. But, I mean, you’re put in that situation, you do what you have to.
Creator	Sullivan, Michael (Interviewee); Pilcher, Annette (Interviewer)
Publisher	Special Collections Division of the Nashville Public Library, 615 Church Street, Nashville, Tennessee, 37219
Contributors	Gibbons, Susannah (Transcriber)
Date	2011-08-27
Type	Sound; Oral histories
Format	audio/mp3 (3.51MB; 01min.,55sec.)
Identifier	FDHSullivanMClip002
Source	Excerpted from: Michael Sullivan Oral History Interview. Born-digital recording(s) converted to mp3 format for online access in 2012 from 16bit 44.1khz WAV file archival master recording.
Language	English
Relation	Flood 2010 Digital History Project
Coverage	2010-2019
Rights	U.S. and international copyright laws protect this digital content, which is provided for educational purposes only and may not be downloaded, reproduced, or distributed for any other purpose without written permission. Please contact the Special Collections Division of the Nashville Public Library, 615 Church Street, Nashville, Tennessee, 37219. Telephone (615) 862-5782.
Location	Closed Stacks-Special Collections Division
Geographic Data	36.087708 -86.723328