The View from the Smokies: ‘Our Sadness Lies in the Town’

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A flock of turkeys browsed the blackened earth at Twin Creeks on Friday afternoon as a pair of women poked through the ruins of a home not far away in Mynatt Park just outside the boundary of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Destruction and charred forest stretched in both directions above deserted yet largely undamaged downtown Gatlinburg, where Christmas lights and bright yet vacant storefronts illuminated empty sidewalks in a surreal twilight scene drenched in the stench of smoke.

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There was sadness and there were bright spots on the fourth day after a gale-driven wildfire, originally sparked along the upper stretches of Chimney Tops Trail the day before Thanksgiving, rushed into the forested ridges and hills around this resort town on a hellish Monday night no one will ever forget.

The announced death toll on Friday rose to 13, Sevier County Mayor Larry Waters said at a morning press conference attended by Gov. Bill Haslam and U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker. Alexander is from Maryville in neighboring Blount County; Corker’s wife is a native of Sevier County. All three pledged state and federal support for fire-fighting and reconstruction efforts. Eighty-five people were treated for injuries; one of the 13 deaths was a heart attack victim.

The economic impact of the fires is still being calculated, a Sevier County spokesperson said Friday. But it will be immense, evidenced by an empty downtown Gatlinburg at the start of the holiday season and the fact that more than 1,000 structures were either damaged or destroyed in the city and county. At least 875 homes burned to the ground. The economic fallout will reach top to bottom: Three Hispanic men gathered outside the shelter at Rocky Top Sports World off U.S. 321 on Friday said in a mishmash of English and Spanish they were unsure when they could return to their jobs at businesses in Gatlinburg. City Manager Cindy Ogle said the main city parkway will not reopen until Wednesday.

Among those killed at Chalet Village — which, along with Ski Mountain, was one of the hardest-hit areas of town — were two couples in their 60s and 70s from Memphis and Canada, Waters said Friday morning. The first victims identified in the disaster were Jon and Janet Summers and John and Marilyn Tegler. The county mayor has become the face of the local crisis response, and he and other officials faced pointed questions from a broadcast reporter for the lack of an evacuation before the fire. He said it was not the time for “Monday-morning quarterbacking” but said every aspect of the disaster will be examined.

“I don’t have jurisdiction to evacuate a town,” said GSMNP Superintendent Cassius Cash.

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There was little that could be done to contain the spread of the fire, said park spokeswoman Molly Schroer. “This is a fire we’ve never seen before,” she said Friday during a tour of damaged areas of the park, which lost no historic cabins or other structures. Fire-fighting efforts were hampered by the effects of severe drought, low humidity levels, and winds that were recorded at 83 mph before the power went out Monday at the Cove Mountain meteorological station.

The dangerous terrain of the Chimneys area prevented more aggressive initial suppression efforts, she said. The fire then spit embers into the picnic area down below. That blaze in turn sent embers a half-mile away and sparked a hot and fast fire on Bull Head near Mount LeConte. A U.S. Fisheries and Wildlife Service officer said that turned into a treetop-to-treetop crown fire, virtually unheard of in Eastern deciduous forest.

As winds —which also grounded aerial fire-fighting — blasted the area Monday into Monday evening, fires broke out 1.5 miles away in Twins Creek. Despite aggressive firefighting efforts that saved the Twin Creeks Science and Education Center, pavilion and bathrooms, and the Ogle cabin, that’s the fire that spread into the Mynatt Park area and ultimately brought ruin to the ridges above Gatlinburg, Schroer said. The winds also downed power lines that led to other spot fires in the city and county.

Nearly 500 firefighters from state and federal agencies continued laboring Friday to keep the fire area contained and monitor hotspots.

Property owners and renters were allowed to return home briefly beginning Friday morning.

Dan Mitchell, the president of the Homebuilders Association of Greater Knoxville, said the rebuilding process could be complicated by both new code requirements that insurance payouts won’t completely cover, and the lack of labor. He said a coalition of builders and developers would examine ways to further protect large resorts and developments from the ravages of wildfire, and “what could be done to help with exit strategy.”

But echoing a sentiment shared by many, he said little could have been done to prevent the catastrophic spread of the fires, fueled by ideal conditions for explosive growth. “It just happened so fast,” he said.

Later, up Newfound Gap Road, still closed to the public, a media gaggle led by Schroer looked out over the expansive drainage below the charred ridges of Bull Head and LeConte. The fire will leave scars for years, but the forest systems will recover.

“This is not where our sadness lies,” she said as the air cooled rapidly beneath clear skies in the waning daylight some 2,000 feet above the heartbreak in Gatlinburg. “Our sadness lies in the town.”

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Knox County-based journalist Thomas Fraser is a native of Charleston, S.C. who grew up in Oak Ridge and Knoxville. He is a graduate of the University of Tennessee and has worked as an editor and reporter for daily newspapers and websites in Tennessee, North Carolina, New Jersey and Virginia.

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