NELSON: May 2nd, I was working. I work for the fire department and the flooding started on I-24 at Bell Road. Actually it was more areas around the city, but that was the lengthiest call, I should say, we went on. I was actually stationed at Engine 11 that day which is in North Nashville and we went from North Nashville all the way to I-24 and Bell Road, which was, is, a very uncommon event. Just due to the magnitude of calls that were coming in that day, everybody was affected. Fire department wise, every station was out doing some form of call due to the flooding or other matters with the rain. When we got out there, several, I would say probably 20 plus, maybe even 30 plus vehicles were under water or close to being fully submerged under water except for several tractor trailers. And the gentlemen I worked with from Engine 11 and also from Engine 5 and Engine 7 worked one, to procure a boat, and but before the boat arrived we actually walked down through the water to get several people out of their vehicles and stuff like that. After a boat arrived, we actually launched a boat onto I-24, which is kind of an unusual event and made several other rescues.
That one actually had been Engine 5 and part of the crew from Engine 11 that did that. And the rest of the evening, just torrential rain basically all day and we just handled several different type water calls after that.
Excerpted from: James Nelson 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.
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