REBECCA: And people upland from me in Sylvan Park had their basements- in fact when I went for walk on Monday morning there was this chorus of sump pumps, I mean it was almost musical, but it’s all you could hear in the neighborhood were people pumping water from their basements.
GIBBONS: Wow, that’s a striking visual, huh.
REBECCA: It is- it was a striking sound, a hum.
GIBBONS: Wow. Can you tell us about recovery efforts that you witnessed and the kind of problems you were dealing with at the Richland Creek-
REBECCA: Well I’ll say, I’ll go back to Sunday after, there was a big explosion in that intersection, Hazmat came out and there was the lingering sound/smell of chemicals and smoke for a long time and Morrow Road was closed down for quite a while, I mean Richland Creek shopping Center was on the TV, the new upcoming West Nashville Police Precinct was flooded, the property was flooded. People were being rescued out by those floatable boats, motorized boats and such but there was a car sucked into a storm drain. I guess that was one of the other explosions that closed that road down for a long time. So really the only way that I could get over to the other side of Charlotte was by bicycle which I did and I took some photographs and that was like going to a cross between a war zone and a landfill due to the just enormous amount of debris that already had started being piled up by people the day after and just the chaos and then there was on top of it all the onlookers which was annoying to me was all the people parading through these very narrow streets entertaining themselves b y looking at others’ strife. But you know the recovery was persistent, people didn’t stop until things were manageable and food and water and safety and roads got cleared and electrical lines were safe and the things like that and I was quite proud to be a Nashvillian, really.
Excerpted from: Monette Rebecca 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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