Death Toll Rises To 4 In Tennessee Wildfires

School officials in Cocke and Sevier counties canceled classes for Wednesday.

Gatlinburg’s mayor said the city will rebuild, and its fire chief said this likely will go down in the history books. Additionally, 11,600 people in Sevier County, Tenn., had lost electrical power, and 17 had been injured.

With his family packed in a van, Ryan and crew are evacuated from their mountain top home, as fires sweep thru Gatlinburg.

Buddy McLean said he watched Monday from a deserted Gatlinburg street as flames surrounded his 26-acre hotel nestled in the mountains.

However, forecasts of strong wind gusts and severe thunderstorms through midweek threatened lightning strikes – and more fires. Fire has destroyed more than 150 homes and businesses in Sevier County. A dozen people were injured but no deaths have been reported. A Vanderbilt official said those patients were in critical but stable condition Tuesday afternoon.

Gatlinburg remains under a mandatory evacuation. Officials say more than 2 million people visit the aquarium each year.

Twenty-six active fires have burned almost 12,000 acres (4,855 hectares) across the state, Tennessee s Department of Agriculture reported Wednesday. She said Americans have stepped up in a big way and overloaded Red Cross with materials.

The fire was exacerbated on Tuesday by what authorities have described as “hurricane-force” winds of up to 87 miles per hour. “Even being that far away, we had dust and ash falling on my house and cars in Dandridge”, he said. The fires spread quickly Monday night, which caught most of the region by surprise.

Fifty of the guests who were evacuated are staying at shelters in the area.

Mattise reported from Nashville, Tennessee.

“This is the largest fire in the last 100 years in the state of Tennessee”.

The city of Gatlinburg has also requested that customers conserve water as much as possible, since firefighting activities, combined with the water loss in burned structures, has placed a significant demand on the water resources of the city.

The flames drove more than 14,000 people from the Great Smoky Mountain tourist city of Gatlinburg, which is still under curfew, according to CBS News.

One of the bodies was found Wednesday in a burned motel, officials said. Thousands of people have been evacuated from the area. Several other shelters have opened to house those forced from their homes.

TEMA spokesman Dean Flener says the troops will transport first responders, perform welfare checks and remove debris.

The wind carried the flames from the nearby Chimney Tops fire across ground parched by a historic drought and into the resort towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge.

At least 53 people were treated for injuries at hospitals, though their conditions were not known.

Michelle Hankes, spokeswoman for the Knoxville chapter of the American Red Cross, said the agency has received more donations of food, clothes and other necessities at this point than volunteers and staff can handle.

A light rain fell across the area earlier in the night but was not enough to put out the flames. As many as 20 large fires are now blazing across 142,000 acres, according to Adam Rondeau, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service, who described the unusually parched conditions as creating the “perfect storm” for active wildfires.