It was about 50 years after the storm when grandad would gather us around his chair & talk about it. I heard the stories so many times at such an impressionable age I almost felt like I had been there. He didn't talk much about the bodies he mostly told us about the weather & the noise.
His old unit had a reunion recently at my parents' house. It would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall at that party.
You need to write down what you can remember right away. That kind of oral history is extremely valuable.