Dolly Parton sets up fund for wildfire victims

All roads in the country, including areas devastated by the fire, will be open to property owners tomorrow, officials said. The name of this fire is unclear, but it is reported to be in the Cobbly Nob area.

Authorities continue to search for the missing.

Since it began last week, the Gatlinburg, Tennessee fire near Great Smoky Mountains National Park has burned an estimated 17,000 acres, damaging hundreds of homes and businesses.

Emergency officials say the death toll from Tennessee wildfires this week has risen to 11. Another 300 or so have been damaged or destroyed in Gatlinburg.

It will be Monday and maybe later before numerous victims are allowed into their neighborhoods, especially in Gatlinburg, where a mandatory evacuation remains in effect and roads into the city are still blocked.

The officials warned that structures are not necessarily safe to enter and may not be stable. Insurance adjusters will be on hand as well. He said authorities haven’t been able to find them.

Though some hot spots remain, the fires that have ravaged the Great Smoky Mountains this week have been extinguished, Sevier County’s mayor announced Thursday afternoon. It was the same storm system that killed three people in Alabama and caused damage in parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Louisiana.

However, he said today that people should not let the rain “give us a false sense of security”.

Smoke billows from the remains of a home on the northern outskirts of Gatlinburg, Tenn., Thursday, Dec. 1, 2016. Many of those treated were already released, officials said.

Bill Haslam has called the wildfire the state’s largest fire in 100 years.

“The fire is not out; it is just knocked down”, fire operations chief Mark Jamieson said in the bulletin.

The My People Fund will give $1,000 per month to Sevier County families “that have lost their homes in the fires until they can get back up on their feet”. An additional 212 firefighters were requested to help with the effort on Tuesday, he added. “And that grew and that grew and that grew”, Miller said.

“We ask for prayers for the people that are still trying to figure out how to put this thing all back together”.

Some of the searchers have lost homes and family members of their own, and most refused to go home despite being told to take breaks, Miller said.

“We will rebuild”, said Werner. Three adult brothers were there with their parents.

As dawn broke Tuesday morning, harrowing accounts began to emerge of the inferno that threatened the resort towns overnight.

Formally called the “Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, Sevierville Emergency Response Fund”, the organization will use the funds to distribute grants to “nonprofits providing assistance both in the immediate and long term”, the fund’s donation page explains. The fire caused considerable destruction in Gatlinburg.

Parton is accepting donations on her website.

Episcopalians in the path of catastrophic wildfires that have destroyed a large swath of the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains in the southeastern US are working to help their communities in the aftermath. “I thought she’d be standing in the driveway”.

The fire destroyed a number of structures at Gatlinburg’s Westgate Smoky Mountain Resort & Spa.

Church of the Annunciation in Newport, Tennessee, had not been affected when Young wrote to the diocese November 29, but is close to the area where the fires are still a danger.

Fanned by hurricane-force winds, the flames reached the doorstep of Dollywood, the Tennessee theme park named after country music legend and local hero Dolly Parton.