Jerry Moore- Flood Interview

Partial Transcript: I grew up in this area and people would tell me about the flood and all. Basically what they would tell us is where it got to on their property and all. And how bad it was is what you would hear.

I remember one lady telling about in the flood it came up right up above the old McClain house which is now Asheville Water Treatment plant on Hwy 191 there. The two rivers met right there behind it, so it was pretty deep in there. Again the road 191 wasn’t there. The road went through the bottoms and you had an old steel bridge there which was took out in the mid-50s. all of that is kind of a dike there now and makes up the road where it floods out all the time.

People don’t realize what it was like back then. People could not get anywhere back then. All of the bridges were out.

Partial Transcript: Not really. I know it was pretty bad around Hendersonville. In some of the readings I read about the water went from the RR tracks in 7th avenue to Blue Ridge school where the blue ridge mall is now. It would probably mean that it was 8-10 feet where we’re standing now at this time. Pretty deep.

Partial Transcript: Well, it was late in the year, most of the farmers had their crops out. But it flooded so bad, I don’t know if you’ve looked at this but the RR bridge on 64 was washed out and it was undermined and when they tried to cross it with a train, the bridge fell in and the train, the back part of the train went into the river there. A lot of destruction on the train. I think one guy was killed in the RR there

Partial Transcript: Everyone was pretty much on their own it was before the government started having programs.

Partial Transcript: Well, if it happened once, it can happen again. We came very close to the flood of Florence and Ivan whenever it came thru, I believe it was 2004, we got most of the water again here. We got a much better response to handle things these days but the problem is people are crazy about driving in water and get washed away that way. No common sense. The old people had more sense to get out of the water.

Today we have so many more people living on the ridge tops.

That’s true. One of the big things they talk about is the slides in the area; all of these houses are built on the side of a mountain so when the water gets in the ground, the side of the mountains to slide off wherever it gets bad. It can happen again. Houses and people can go with it.

Partial Transcript: Well there’s much more stuff today than there was back then. It makes it hard to compare. Back then, people wouldn’t build on the side of the mountain like they do today and it’s much more dangerous to be there.

Partial Transcript: Well, if anything can happen it will happen. It can destroy a whole lot today. There are a lot of things built that would have been in flood waters then. All of these are built much lower than they would have built in the old days. Everything’s based on the 100 flood plan and this was a 500 year flood so…

Partial Transcript: Everything you need to know, you can find in the history about it. If you don’t study history, you get nowhere; you repeat the same thing over and over. You need to learn by history. It’s a great learning tool.

Partial Transcript: Well, evidently we’re not teaching what we need to or we wouldn’t be in the conditions we’re in today. It’s going to be hard to turn away the dollars when they come in when they want to do that stuff.