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| | Tuesday, November 29, 2016
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Fire, wind and outages
Cocke and Seier County Schools as well as Newport Grammar are closed today. City of Gatlinburg, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials have reported widespread fire damage and continued fire activity throughout the Gatlinburg area and much of Sevier County including Wears Valley, Pigeon Forge, and Jones Cove. Gatlinburg City officials have reported numerous structures completely lost to fire including businesses in the downtown area and private homes throughout the area. At this time, officials do not have information to release regarding the current size of the fire, the number of structures burned, or injuries. Additional news updates will be provided as information becomes available. Extreme weather conditions Sunday afternoon through Monday led to the spread of fires both inside and outside of the National Park. Severe wind gusts of over 80 mph, unprecedented low humidity, and extended drought conditions caused the fire burning in the National Park to spread rapidly and unpredictably, in spite of suppression efforts on Sunday that included helicopter water drops. Wind gusts carried burning embers long distances causing new spot fires to ignite across the park and into Gatlinburg. In addition, high winds caused numerous trees to fall throughout the evening on Monday bringing down power lines across the area that ignited additional new fires that spread rapidly due to sustained winds of over 40 mph. This morning conditions remain extremely dangerous with trees expected to continue to fall. Officials are asking that motorists stay off the roadways throughout the area. Travel in the Gatlinburg area is limited to emergency traffic only, and he National Park is closed at the Gatlinburg entrance. Wind gusts Monday evening tore off portions of the Smoky Mountains Elementary School roof as basketball practice was underway. Cocke County Sheriff Armando Fontes told the NewsSource that the roof did not collapse, no debris fell onto the 40 occupants and there were no injuries.The subsequent rain was able to fall through the roof onto the gym floor, the sheriff said . The Cocke County Fire Department, volunteer fire units and the Newport Rescue Squad responded to the scene. Sheriff Fontes said his deputies spent to night assisting residents to leave Gatlinburg. "I can't say enough about the cooperation of the various departments," the sheriff said. "They came from Kingsport to Knoxville to assist in fighting one of the largest fires in East Tennessee history." Jimmy Robertson of the Newport Utilities Electric Department reported that the high winds resulted in multiple outages in the Cosby, Hartford, and Grassy Fork communities. With a peak outage of more than 2,800+ customers. He said all available crews were working to restore power to those areas, but just before 7 this morning Robertson reported that multiple outages still existed due to high winds and fallen trees. He said customer outages were fluctuating around 887.
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