Today, in many areas of Sevier County, the stark and empty landscape looks like a scene out of a post-apocalyptic movie, with blackened skeletons and stumps of once-living trees sticking up through a brown and gray blanket of charred soil and ash.
In an update at 4:13 p.m., it was announced that the death toll in the wildfires in Sevier County, Tenn. has risen to seven people.
The Knoxville News-Sentinel reports that at a news conference Wednesday morning in Gatlinburg, authorities confirmed that a body found in a motel on U.S. 321 was the fourth death associated with the wildfires that swept through the area. Officials also added that eight new wildfires have been confirmed.
The Sevier County wildfire is believed to be the largest fire in Tennessee in more than 100 years. Officials say the original fire, at Chimney Tops Trail, that started the conflagration on Monday and sparked over a dozen additional fires, was not caused by a lightning strike but was human-caused.
According to USA Today, Cassius Cash, the park’s superintendent, said the Chimney Tops fire burned about 50 acres on Sunday. By Monday, with gusting winds clocked at 87 mph, the fire spread quickly, roaring into Sevier County with unprecedented speed. Rainfall totaling about one inch on Tuesday night gave firefighters some relief in fighting the flames.
Derek Eisentrout, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service (NWS) in Morristown said on Wednesday that there is a potential for an additional 1/2 inch of rain on Wednesday and again on Saturday. The Cumberland Plateau, about 60 miles west of Knoxville, received up to five inches of rain.
The NWS in Grand Rapids, Michigan posted on its website that people in the area were reporting the smell of smoke. The NWS reports: “The source was from forest fires in the Great Smoky Mountains area, including the one which engulfed Gatlinburg, Tenn., Monday night. An analysis of the meteorological setup last night supports this theory.”
