|
Title |
Excerpt from Tiffani Zuch Oral History Interview, 2011 April 16 |
|
Personal name |
Zuch, Tiffani 1982- --Interviews |
|
Corporate name |
FEMA |
|
Topical entry |
Natural disasters--Nashville (Tenn.)
Storytelling--Nashville (Tenn.)
Oral history--Sources
Oral history--Library resources
Water rescue boats
Rescue work
Flood damage
Volunteer response--Nashville (Tenn.)
Floods--Social aspects
Natural disasters--Religious aspects
|
|
Geographic entry |
Nashville (Tenn.)--Floods
Nashville (Tenn.)--History--21st century
Nashville (Tenn.)--History--Sources
|
|
Description |
Excerpt from an oral history interview with Tiffani Zuch, conducted on 16 April 2011 by Robin Robinson as part of the Flood 2010 Digital History Project. Tiffani describes the flooding of her Pennington Bend neighborhood, her evacuation by boat, and the aftermath of the flooding. The complete interview is available in the Special Collections Division. |
|
Transcript |
ZUCH: I think by the time anyone realized that it was going to flood and that we should probably think about leaving, there was no way that anyone could. Not one person on our road got a car out. Miami Avenue is one road right on the river and there’s only one road that leads down to it. And by lunchtime that road, the one road leading down to it was already waist deep. That was the road that our, the young couple that are good friends lived on and we went to their house two or three times throughout the day to move things up and up. And early afternoon we went down there and it was already to, you know, way, it was already very high in their house and there was no way that—. So there were even volunteers from our church who came down early in the day to help move furniture of our neighbors’ and do all kinds of stuff. We probably had at least five people who lost their cars, who didn’t even live on the road. They just couldn’t get their cars out after they got down there. So kind of at that point, you know, that road sits a little bit lower, so we kind of thought, “Okay, well.” And eventually we tried to, at the end of our street is kind of an access road for I guess city people and so we cut down a fence and tried to get our cars out that way but at that point it was too deep that way too. So yeah and in my household alone we lost nine vehicles.
ROBINSON: Where did you go once you were evacuated by boat? Where did they take you?
ZUCH: They took us to Loch Two, which is a park area and it has some boat docks. So we were on the last, we were on the last boatload of people and so we finally got to Loch Two and Loch Two had started to flood, so they had already pulled in big huge trucks to transport us through because there were already several places on the road to get out of Loch Two that were flooding. So they took us to a nearby neighborhood and at that point people from our church, again we have at least ten families on our road that all go to the same church, so at that point people from our church had come down to pick us up. And we all went to the church and a lot of us spent the night at the church and went to different people’s houses.
ROBINSON: What church is that?
ZUCH: The Donelson Fellowship. It’s on McGavock Pike.
ROBINSON: You’ve shared so much with me, but is there any other definitive moment or event that stands out the most from the flooding or the aftermath of the flooding that we haven’t discussed?
ZUCH: Well I think that our road had a very unique experience because we do all go to the same church. One of my neighbors said that it was the best week of his life and I feel like a lot of us feel that way because we lost a lot of things but there were certain things that you just don’t lose. Nobody died, everything we lost was just stuff and we had the most wonderful experience afterwards of cleaning up. I mean, we have story after story of volunteers who came from all over the country, of the people who provided things that we needed at the right moment that we needed them. There was just such an outpouring of love and volunteerism and Karl Dean came down to our road many times. And we just had a great experience and it just taught us what was really important and rebuilding was a pain and so (laughing) uncomfortable at times. I mean, we lived in the top floor of our house for months without hot water, without air conditioning, without a kitchen. We washed our dishes in a bucket in the backyard and took cold baths. But it was an experience, we’ll never forget it. God was so good to us and it was just a very unique time and we had lots of people who commented on, a lot of the FEMA people especially, who said we’ve been to disaster areas all over the country and every type of situation and it’s such a different attitude down here. You know, people can’t steal things, or not people, the flood cannot steal things that are really important. |
|
Creator |
Zuch, Tiffani (Interviewee); Robinson, Robin (Interviewer) |
|
Publisher |
Special Collections Division of the Nashville Public Library, 615 Church Street, Nashville, Tennessee, 37219 |
|
Contributors |
Bennett, Harvey (Transcriber) |
|
Date |
2011-04-16 |
|
Format |
audio/mp3 (9.20 MB; 05min., 01sec.) |
|
Identifier |
FDHZuchTClip001 |
|
Source |
Excerpted from: Tiffani Zuch 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 |
36.244586 -86.702386 |
Nashville Public Library Digital Collection
