Canadian couple in their 70s among the dead in Tennessee wildfire

Another alert soon followed with a similar warning about limiting mobile phone use to emergency calls.

On Thursday, tourism officials in Pigeon Forge, home to Dollywood and other popular attractions near Great Smoky Mountains National Park, stressed the importance of visitors to the region’s recovery.

Murphy is planning to go back in a couple of weeks to pick up some personal items they left in the cabin.

Authorities said after following up on dozens of leads of missing people, most had been accounted for. They got out and ran and became separated from their parents. He said the wind came in earlier than forecast.

“The road was on fire and every house was engulfed in flames”.

“So we went from [no fires in the city] to over 20 plus structure fires in a matter of minutes”.

Gatlinburg officials are trying to answer pointed questions about why they were caught flat-footed by a deadly wildfire and why evacuation notices weren’t made earlier. “The fires in the North Carolina mountains are close to Gatlinburg”.

In nearby communities, there were signs of normality. Nobody is allowed into the city of Gatlinburg at the time. “So I think that’s how I’m getting through this, is focusing more on others than myself because so many other people are in the same boat”. He credited their survival to rain that fell during the night. Fire-fighting efforts were hampered by the effects of severe drought, low humidity levels and winds that were recorded at 83 miles per hour before the power went out Monday at the Cove Mountain meteorological station. Another 6,000 acres were scorched outside of the park.

The trouble began Monday when a wildfire spread from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park into the Gatlinburg area.

Gatlinburg Fire Chief Greg Miller said: “We had trees going down everywhere, power lines, all those power lines were just like lighting a match because of the extreme drought conditions”.

By Monday afternoon, the city was recommending people leave the Mynatt Park area, according to Tennessee emergency agency logs. Officials said she was vacationing in Gatlinburg, but an obituary posted online said she was from the area.

Authorities haven’t publicly identified any of the three among the dead, but Morris said Sevier County Sheriff’s Office deputies had informed the family of the mother’s death.

County and state officials were also quizzed by some reporters on when notifications to evacuate were sent out.

So far, the Gatlinburg fire, known as Chimney Tops 2, charred nearly 18,000 acres of public and private land, according to the InciWeb national fire management system. “It started with boots on the ground”. Wilson said he knew neighbors who didn’t lose their homes felt guilty.

“The last contact we received was somewhere shortly after 8 p.m. Monday night, a text that they were in the process of evacuating the house in Tennessee”, Dave LaPointe, the Teglers’ son-in-law, told Global News from his Woodstock home Friday.

Some members of Holy Cross Parish in Pigeon Forge also lost their homes, belongings and businesses.

The state Department of Labor will work with local agencies to help expedite applications for unemployment insurance, Sevier County Mayor Larry Waters said.

Parton said she hopes the financial assistance will help people who lost everything get back on their feet again.