They got info from NPS about the fire spreading. You can see in the leaf pattern around it how a strong gust pushed up against the side of the house. I believe that many, many people are alive now because they did use common sense but some of the people who died, were victims of circumstances that they should never have faced if their public officials had been acting solely on their responsibility, first and foremost, and perhaps only, to protect and serve. I dont know details as to the trail. Accountability is important and paying the price for our decisions is too. Did the 14th fire discreetly burn in the duff amid rock cervices? Lose their jobs over this? Since we had been planning all day to go downtown to play trivia at Smoky Mountain Brewery, we left the house about 5:55PM. There will be no access to Wiley Oakley or Westgate from the Spur. Accountability! The cause of the crash remains under investigation. Not everything that happened with the fires had a dotted line to those two teens. The chain reaction that if un-inhibited can create the perfect storm, block the perfect solutions or that can lead to the ignition of possibility and opportunity. A lot of personnel put forth heroic efforts to save lives and we should all be grateful for that. My boys and I do not have images of wildfires that we would have seen had we waited to leave home. I am just saying that it is not necessary to lynch someone in order to hold them accountable. Jeannine, its obvious that you write from the heart, and you write so well it is indeed inspirational. Thank you for this excellent synopsis. Though the drought and winds were undoubtedly an act of God (Psalms 148:8; 1st Kings 17:1), NPS and other officials were not left ignorant. The town I live in in Kentucky has a $500 fine for tossing a cigarette out the window and we do not even have The potential for many brushfires. night at 9pm when mom said there was evacuation notice on TV. This article shows NPS was concerned by and notified of impending high winds. As they are minors, nothing else is known other than the Feds said the State could prosecute. There may be some validity in the DA doing that, but it sure calls their integrity into question. According to the great gag order, government officials should not be commenting???? Bob headed our way. Do we need to learn from it. If one is growing by experience you keep them moving forward as we all benefit from their learning and experience. One only has to imagine a single downed power line starting a structure fire at the same time the wildfire was approaching to understand how the great loss of property and life actually happened. Published: Dec. 24, 2022 at 10:17 AM PST GATLINBURG, Tenn. (WVLT) - On Friday, Gatlinburg city officials released a report detailing the downtown fire on Oct. 9 that killed one person and injured another. One thing Id add: the county is allowing residents that lost their home to use their existing block or poured foundation as long as they have one of their local cemetacious experts test it and approve it. Why the complacency? Like hell he did. The fire did not get up the valley to the Alum Cave Parking Lot, and LeConte Lodge is fine. Property owners still have the rights to protect their property. There are thousands and thousands of people who feel as I do about your loss and the losses of so many people in Gatlinburg and the surrounding area. Kelly you are right, NO Help from City or County in the clean up..SOS home owners responsible for all.. Not just putting out the fires, but restoring the forest and trails afterward. I hold you in my thoughts and prayers for healing and recovery there are others who have posted about their losses on this blog, Kelly for one, and I did not give myself peymidfipn to say these words to them at the time .. Emergency crews were on the scene for 31 hours extinguishing the fire before the emergency demolition was requested. When peoples towns and lives are at stake, letting a fire burn or hoping to get lucky is a tough sell. All together this was the absolute worse place to have a fire at almost the worst time, save it was lucky to not have been a few weeks earlier. We believed the firefighters were going to stop the fire from entering the city. So who would you blame the people that died, wildlife and homeowners. Thanks Henry. If youve ever been in an incident management role you understand often having made a good decision given the best information available at the time you dont get the outcome you want. Finally, the Superintendent has the power to call up all the resources which were available. Officials said three people. Firefighting resources assigned to the fire include 25 hand crews, 61 engines, 6 helicopters, and 2 dozers, for a total 780 personnel. Only 0.05 inch fell at the Indian Grave Remote Automatic Weather Station 18 miles west of the fire. Classic Swiss Cheese risk management fire management failurehave we as a profession learned anything since South Canyon, Yarnell and now Chimney Top 2? We must open our eyes and ears and check behind each corner and crevice to see the reality and not just the story being told by a few. We must as you say accept that humans are emotional beings and that goes for those who lost and those who stand to perhaps lose their jobs and livelihood often for making the best decisions they could with what was available to them at the time. You cannot sit and watch a fire in the mountains this close to a town and not call in lots of HELP!!! Even life-long locals said they had never seen rhododendren wither up before. Good point, Ms. Horton. Be sure to bring valid forms of identification showing name and address of residence or business inside Gatlinburg. Stupidity is as stupidity does. Not to lay blame or punishment but as a real learning tool for improvement of service provision. That is when it would have been prudent to announce a pre-evacuation notice for the Gatlinburg area to be ready to evacuate if an evacuation order is announced. Forecasts were issued each day from November 24 through 27; we could not find one for November 28 the day the fire burned into Gatlinburg. He should loose his job and be prosecuted for this mess he created. NO managing wildfire is much more complex, especially in a multiple fire drought driven incident like managers were dealing with on this incident. Though Im missing the boat a little here, my questioning is still legitimate being that any managed ignited fire can still get out of control adding to an existing wildfire or creating one. (Bloomberg) -- Zoom Video Communications Inc. slumped in early trading Friday after abruptly terminating the employment of . Firefighters from Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge responded. If the NPS backfires were not ignited on the 28th; then they had to be ignited on the 27th a day before the fire broke out. Because we were heading home to Ohio early Tuesday morning, we packed our suitcases and put them in the car. If I had even been in the bathroom or downstairs I wouldve died . Good points about differentiating between prescribed fire and the wildfire. For example politicians far away from the event make decisions regarding funding, resources and operations. These words are so terribly inadequate but I feel even worse not saying anything at all. Being asleep at the wheel is no excuse. They should not be excused because they did not escape the consequences this time of their lax policies and their actual failure to follow the procedures they should have followed. How about that for arm chair quarter backing. This was done to simply to avoid tort liability claims even though a claim was filed; and to avoid accountability. I think this is more often than not the case. In Gatlinburg, smoke and fire caused the mandatory evacuation of downtown and surrounding . In my eyes, TEMA should have taken control of the situation and ordered evacuations before sunset. Easy for many of you to sit back and Monday morning quarterback when you dont have skin in the game as I did. I later learned that Sevier County pays for an emergency notification system called Code Red Alert. Triage of resource needs versus values at risk, firefighter safety, resource values and political realities all come into play. We strive to use real facts, not alternative facts, on Wildfire Today. If you search around, you can find a recorded radio transmission by TN Forestry personnel from that fateful morning (my old brain doesnt remember where it was posted and I didnt bookmark it, but some other WFT readers may know). I was in the area hiking November 21 and there was no smoke coming from the Chimneys area. I have a photo I took from the Walmart parking lot looking south that shows how smoky it was in Pigeon Forge. Those probably did not finish burning for several days. I am not one to Monday Morning Quarterback, because none of us have all the information and really we all have limited information, no one person knows it all; but as a citizen with background knowledge, experience, training, risk and situational awareness, the potential was clearly predictable days in advance of the aggressive action. There were emergency vehicles blocking Motor Nature Trail. This area was in the process of being logged prior to the wildfire, (supposedly started by a logging train) of 1925. Many times, as has been thoroughly vetted during the analysis the Chimney Top 2 wildfire the ONLY option is an all out aggressive, throw the world at it initial attack from air, ground and sea. I hope they end up being involved in the biggest lawsuit anyone has ever seen! Under ideal conditions they can temporarily slow the spread, which may be effective if firefighters on the ground can move in quickly totake advantage of the short termchange in fire behavior by constructing firelines, stopping the spread at that location. Will Lessons Learned fade into distant short-term US fire management history archives once again. Contractor will be on site this weekend with a subcontractor cleaning up my debris and really pouring my foundation and my logs will arrive within 15 days or more . But. Honor. It was hard to drive because of falling leaves, branches, smoke, wind, and nerves. The Knox News timeline alone has enough info for several indictments. GSMNP Facebook has pulled comments, photos, and replies as well in regard to the 14th fire. Officials identified Robert A. Hejny, 63, who was found at Traveler's Motel in Gatlinburg. Standing dead hemlock burned up their trunks, to as high as 50 feet on one specimen I saw. Below is a comment I posted from New Sentinel article about Gatlinburg fire, Wildfire Today something that undoubtedly should be investigated as well as compared to their actions of the 23rd to 28th Chimney Tops Fire 2: Officials are evasive and vague about the 1st Chimney Tops Fire. The three places the fire was stated to have been seem to line up pretty straight on the map. The diff. I believe someone else may have mentioned this in other Wildfire Today article/comments? So far, this week's tragic Tennessee wildfires have caused at least seven deaths, injured at least 50 more, and damaged or destroyed over 700 structures, a good portion of them in the city of Gatlinburg. It's always sad to see the destructive forces of Mother Nature. This data from Indian Grave was not too far offthe forecast issued the day before. There will be legal repercussions because of incompetence. A stroke in 2011 left Akaka partially paralyzed and unable to speak but he didn't need words to express his joy to be reunited with it. I certainly agree there are definitely consequences for our actions, for some more than others. Both east and west forks of the Pigeon River. I am broken-hearted over it .. The remains of 745 Main Street in Buffalo on Thursday, March 2, 2023., where a fire broke out on Wednesday . Much needed rainfall is expected on Monday with additional rainfall possible through Wednesday. A few scattered, mostly Red Spruce, conifers are all that is left. The adelgid apparently needs the rougher bark of older trees to climb up the trunk to the greenery on which they feed. Our place was gone. They are having a press conference this afternoon so perhaps there will be more transparency. If the superintendent of the Park Service couldnt see what the consequence could be then he was not qualified for the job and after reading his BIO he was never qualified and this is what we get. I can only hope that the actions are being undertaken somewhere and by the decision-makers and leaders to think and act differently. They strive to their utmost and have a true passion working in GSMNP. Are they learning how to use it? It is my understanding this first fire was at or near the summit in the immediate vicinity of the 2nd fire which unfortunately devastated Gatlinburg. Thanks for the good fact based, solid coverage of the events leading up to the fire. How far from the Chimney Tops, as the crow flies, were these pictures taken? The deaths in this incident can be attributed to being trapped and forced to shelter in place. What the fire victims need is non-biased experts to analyze the BACKFIRES that the NPS claims they ignited to protect NPS structures. Not sure why it matters, but you offered such a specific time, thought I would offer info to possibly make it more accurate. Yes my house burnt along with 520 others in North Chalet Village, village no longer but all foundations. This eventually will affect us all at some point in time, as we too may one day find ourselves faced with similar circumstance. Every business downtown was closed except for Bubba Gumps. She said smoke had been super heavy. Prescribed burning is a critical ecosystem management tool across the nation, especially in the Southeast (https://goodfires.org/how) and when the term is used interchangeably with monitored wildfires it can lead to confusion. The person or people responsible for the fire have not yet been found. "We've had five (fatalities) really close together and this is more than we normally have by this time of year," Boyd said. An ongoing lawsuit against the National Park Service over its handling of the 2016 Gatlinburg Wildfire is on hold as a federal judge considers a motion to dismiss the suit. Almost every creek drainage in GSMNP has stands of dead hemlocks (though some areas near roads had some hemlocks treated regularly to prevent adelgid infestation). Out east our experience is usually ground fire with relatively less risk of widespread destruction. Earlier on Tuesday, media reported that a man was arrested for setting three fires that spread into a 300-acre fire in. Over 130 sustained injuries, and 1,684 structures have been damaged or destroyed. A little later the local TV news reported the fire had crossed the road and was headed up the mountain behind the Park Vista. They had no sirens or Claxons blaring, no shouting to evacuate thru their grill mounted speakers. Four downtown Gatlinburg businesses are picking up the pieces, after a fire Sunday morning destroyed their building. Cleanup continued Tuesday, with crews piling up rubble near Traffic Light 6 on the Gatlinburg Pkwy. The park needs to share accountability in this situation, and all of us who have formerly worked in fire realize this. We drove down to Calhouns complex, through their parking area and back out onto the parkway and headed east. I fully understand the financial difficulties of the NPS and with firefighters abroad. Rain began falling late Monday night and continued until 6 a.m. Tuesday, totaling 0.78 inch at Indian Grave. We stopped long enough to make sure they saw the fire coming and proceeded on down the mountain. Neither the NPS nor the city wanted CNN cameras covering a mass evacuation of a town jam packed with tourists on Thanksgiving weekend. I said a quick prayer for safety and we started up hill to leave our truck. It was the hottest summer we ever felt. When we got to the bottom of the mountain, we ran into the Sevier County Electric crew where the road was blocked. Ms. Schroer told us that additional firefighters were ordered on Sunday. OF COURSE the dead hemlocks (and spruces and firs) are changing the picture for fire danger. I am astounded at the amount of information, expertise, warning, and awareness of imminent danger was present and available in this situation. I have to assume that the city of Gatlinburg felt that since my road was county property that I was on my own. I have a lot of pictures to share via my blog. So many unanswered questions? It just so happens that at this time hundreds of fires were subsequently being started all around the south! Kelly, Lloyd and anyone else that had home and/or businesses losses from the fire, tell everyone involved to write and/or call the governors office about what is going on. Many, if not most, of these incidents leave the confines of the managing agency and sweep out onto lands owned or managed by others who had NO input into the original incident management strategy. There is much opportunity in the Eastern Appalachians to better prepare citizens, towns , leaders and firefighters; To create more fire aware and safe communities. I guess they must think when you have to go up there to handle this mess they caused that you dont need lodging, food or gas to get there. Despite that, officials now say that the Gatlinburg fire began in the park and was. The whole thing is unconscionable to me. Being an avid mountain hiker, I had seen evidence of fires from decades ago (Graveyard Fields being a macro example, but most prior fires in the forest were just like the ones this fall floor duff and fallen dead wood). Their are undoubtedly many many causative factors for any disaster, even the actions, inactions and unintentional actions can be like a snowball rolling down a mountain of snow! Ive posted this type of questioning on other Wildfire Today articles. The IMT reported that the fire had not increased in size over the previous 24 hours and was still listed at 17,006 acres. Thanks for adding more good insight.
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