Roy Exum: Like The Gates Of Hell

  • Wednesday, November 30, 2016
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

From the Gatlinburg fire come two voices. “If you are a person of prayer, we could use your prayers,” said the city’s nearly-traumatized fire chief Ralph Miller.

From an emergency shelter, Michelle Hanks, the director of the Red Cross in East Tennessee, had tears streaming down her face and it wasn’t from the thick smoke. “This fire is unpredictable,” she sobbed. “We still have wind gusts – the rain has helped, but it is still a devastating, devastating loss for the people here. Then, with a trembling lip, she added. These are our community. This is East Tennessee and we are working together.”

Hanks also told the Knoxville News-Sentinel, “This is going to be a marathon, not a sprint,” after 150 houses burned in Gatlinburg and our Great Smokey Mountain charred the worst since history has been recorded. By yesterday afternoon there were three dead, and three more critical at the Vanderbilt Burn Center. 

With the forest fires popping up around Chattanooga, the fire experts kept warning us that a natural disaster could happen, but nobody expected this. Gatlinburg was hit hard, but the three sides of the wonderful town bordered by the Smokies looked like the Apocalypse had hit. Nothing but ashes. 

It started on Monday when the 50-acre fire on the much-beloved Chimney Top Mountain was suddenly swept up in 80 mile-an-hour wind gusts that launched red hot embers just about everywhere they could land. “That’s nowhere to be when you are fighting a fire. Those winds were hurricane force,” Chief Miller said.

“Within about 15 minutes we were dispatched to more than 20 structure fires,” he added, not mentioning the 16-story Park Vista Hotel on Regan Drive. 

Sevier County is such a wreck that yesterday emergency responders were asking the public not to use cell phones, the emergency calls coming so fast. “Raining fire is just a light way to describe this,” said resident Gary Wilson. “It was more like a nuclear inferno going off. I think easily that 50 aces burned off within a six-hour time frame. It’s like nothing I have ever seen.” 

Park Superintendent Cassius Cash said, “In my 25 years of park service I’ve participated in many fires, but none prepared me for this,” he told reporters, calling the horrific winds “unpresidented.” 

Longtime Gatlinburg Pittman football coach Benny Hammonds saved his house after it caught fire, using strategic water houses and both the building and the clothes he was wearing. “I didn’t want to quit … I guess that’s the football coach in me. If I didn’t already have the hoses, it would have burned down. 

“I’m glad the police finally came and got me. If they hadn’t escorted me out I wouldn’t have been able to get out,” he told News-Sentinel reporters. “The rental cabins beside me were burning down, just like the Gates of Hell you’d picture.”

Hammonds said it was worse than a movie. “Everything was on fire, the leaves, the trees the buildings, everything. Some of the police who came for me were some G-P football players and they didn’t give me a choice. ‘Coach, you are leaving now!” 

A quick sweep through the history books confirmed this is the biggest natural disaster in the state’s history since the earthquake of 1812. The biggest tragedy was at the end of the Civil War when the boiler blew on the steamship Sultana. The boat was eight miles upriver from Memphis and 1,700 were killed. In recent memory it would be the Maury County jail fire where 42 were burned alive in 1972. 

Tennessee will average about six tornadoes a year and there were some coal mine fires in the early 1900s, but the greatest challenge will be trying to raise a Phoenix from the ashes. After 14,000 were evacuated, most still have no idea what they will find when authorities can open the roads. Downed power lines are everywhere. 

Donations are beginning to flood in from across the country. Any First Tennessee Bank in the state is accepting monetary donations (First Tennessee will match the first $50,000) and Red Cross chapters are the statewide locations for physical gifts. Two Knoxville radio stations – Star 102.1 and Q-100 – are coordinating pickup stations in Knoxville. 

Already there is a need for any new or gently-used clothing, blankets and towels, diapers and wipes, baby formula, personal toiletries of all kinds, bottled water, and non-perishable snack items. The Red Cross says the best in-kind donation is gift cards that can be used a grocery stores and department stores. 

Law enforcement authorities are telling the public to stay away from Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge.

Governor Bill Haslam called out the National Guard to help patrol the areas. 

And then there was Justin Garrison, who works with Remote Area Medical. “We are all Tennesseans and we are called the Volunteer State for a reason. When someone is in need or distress, we are there to help lend a hand and help anyway we can.” 

royexum@aol.com

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