Cooper: Great Smoky Mountain fires 'unlike anything most have ever seen'

Thick smoke from area forest fires hovers over downtown Gatlinburg on Monday.
Thick smoke from area forest fires hovers over downtown Gatlinburg on Monday.

Devastating Gatlinburg fires

Hurricane-force winds drove embers from one fire in the Great Smoky Mountains into hundreds of separate fires Monday, turning the resort town of Gatlinburg, Tenn., into a conflagration that razed homes, businesses and acres of forest.

The mountain town that has hosted conferences, honeymooning couples and probably a healthy majority of residents within hundreds of miles at one time or another became a fiery disaster.

"This is a fire for the history books because it is unlike anything most have ever seen," Greg Miller, fire chief for Gatlinburg, said at a news conference Tuesday.

Without the efforts of heroic departments like Miller's, and other departments that came from the likes of Chattanooga, 150 miles away, the destruction might be worse. Local authorities said at least 50 firefighters from 10 Chattanooga area agencies were involved in assistance.

It's likely some of the fire personnel from the Chattanooga area had previous experience fighting wildfires since dozens have roiled the hills and mountains around the city because of the drought and windy conditions in the last month.

As of Tuesday afternoon, three deaths had been reported in the Gatlinburg fires.

Yet, many Scenic City residents began learning during the day that the fires had destroyed their second homes, time-shares or favorite rental places where they'd spent many a night

What had been called the Chimney Tops fire was the culprit, Miller explained. When the humidity dropped ahead of a storm front Monday, he said, the wind speed increased and changed direction. Firefighters were powerless to stop the burning, swirling embers from sailing up to a mile away and starting other fires.

Before the fire chief said "the worst is definitely over with" Tuesday morning, some 14,000 residents were evacuated and more than 150 homes and businesses had been destroyed.

Yet the fires weren't confined to Gatlinburg. Officials said 70 homes in the Wear's Valley community between Townsend and Pigeon Forge and another 70 in the Cobbly Nob and Pittman Center communities were destroyed.

If anything was fortunate about the situation, it was that many other businesses and attractions that had been reported late Monday or early Tuesday to be burning or in imminent threat - such as Ober Gatlinburg and Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies - were never in immediate danger or were saved.

While Thanksgiving may be nearly a week in the rear view mirror, we're thankful today for the departmental interdependence of first responders who helped keep the situation around the country's most visited national park from being worse than it was.

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