Prescribed fire in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, March 9, 2021. NPS photo.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park successfully completed a 175-acre prescribed burn along a half-mile of the park boundary in Wears Valley on Tuesday, March 9. The objective of the project was to reduce the amount of flammable vegetation along the park’s boundary near homes, as well as maintaining an open woodland habitat for drought-tolerant trees like oak and pine.
“The wildland fire specialists did an outstanding job planning, prepping, and executing this prescribed burn in an ongoing effort to help communities along our boundary to create Firewise space between their homes and parklands,” said Chief Ranger Lisa Hendy.
Crews established a 3,000-ft hose lay for added protection around homes at the top of the ridge and along the boundary before implementing the prescribed burn. A small test burn was conducted to confirm fire behavior before the prescribed fire was allowed to burn slowly down the slope towards Metcalf Bottoms Picnic Area. As expected, smoke was visible throughout the operations across the Wears Valley area.
Flame lengths and fire behavior were within prescription throughout the operations as the low-intensity fire backed down the slope over a six-hour period until the burn reached the natural and manmade control lines at the bottom. Crews remained on scene overnight and continued to staff the area for several days to check control lines and monitor fire activity.
Crews from the Cherokee National Forest, Bureau of Indian Affairs in Cherokee, Townsend Volunteer Fire Department, Pittman Center Volunteer Fire Department, Waldens Creek Volunteer Fire Department, The Nature Conservancy, AmeriCorp, and employees from Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Congaree National Park, and Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park provided assistance throughout the burn operations including site preparation and post-burn monitoring.
In preparation for the prescribed burn operation, crews spent several days clearing brush and leaf litter along the park boundary and Indian Camp Branch, which successfully served as fire control lines to keep the fire within its planned boundaries. The 175-acre unit was bounded by Wear Cove Gap Road, Indian Camp Branch, Little River, and the park boundary along Roundtop Trail.
In February the park conducted a prescribed burn in the Cades Cove area, 90 acres in the Rowans Branch unit along Sparks Lane and 338 acres of the Primitive Baptist Church unit along Hyatt Lane.
Prescribed burn in the Cades Cove area of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. NPS photo.
Chimney Tops 2 Fire at 9:37 p.m. November 28, 2016 after it burned into Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Photo credit: Sevierville Police Department.
More than 40 insurance companies are suing the federal government for $450 million over how the fire that burned into Gatlinburg, Tennessee in 2016 was handled, the Knox News is reporting.
Five days after it started in Great Smoky Mountains National Park on November 23 the Chimney Tops 2 Fire spread into the eastern Tennessee city killing 14 people, forcing 14,000 to evacuate, destroying or damaging 2,400 structures, and blackening 17,000 acres.
The strategy used to manage the fire was controversial in that very little direct action was taken to suppress the fire during those first five days until a predicted wind event caused it to spread very rapidly out of the park and into the city.
Below is an excerpt from an article at the Knox News:
The lawsuits blame the devastation on National Park Service officials. Fire managers violated their own policies, the complaints state, when they opted to let the blaze burn amid prolonged drought and forecasted high winds, then failed to monitor it or warn residents of the danger it posed.
The lawsuits single out Greg Salansky, the park’s fire management officer who first spotted smoke coming from the park’s Chimney Tops peaks on Nov. 23, 2016. Salansky didn’t attack the roughly acre-sized fire directly, didn’t dig containment lines initially and waited four days to order water drops by airplane and helicopter.
Earlier drops, the complaints read, could have easily extinguished the fire when it spanned just an acre and a half.
Instead, Salansky opted to try to contain the fire inside a 410-acre box in hopes of coming rain. He briefed higher-ups at the park, according to the complaints, but made no significant progress in containing the fire. It didn’t help that most of the fire crew’s staff was on vacation due to the holiday. No one called them in.
Chimney Tops 2 Fire November 27, 2016. Photo by Brett Bevill.
The National Park Service assembled an eight-person team to review the management of the Chimney Tops 2 Fire. Participants represented the NPS, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Boone Fire Department in North Carolina, plus a Technical Writer-Editor. It was led by Joe Stutler, of the USFS, who is qualified as a Type 1 Incident Commander and Area Commander, positions at the pinnacle of the incident management structure.
On August 31, 2017 Joe Stutler presented information from the report about the Chimney Tops 2 Fire that burned into Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
In a press conference when the report was released, Mr. Stutler began by saying the report was intended to not place blame on anyone, and would “avoid should have, could have, and would have, statements that frankly inhibit sensemaking and also inhibit continuing to learn from the event.”
Describing the actions taken or not taken on the fire, he said, “the review team found no evidence of negligence of anyone at the park. They did the very best they could when it came to their duty. They did the very best they could based on what was loaded in their hard drive”, he said as he pointed to his head. “Never in the history of this park or even in the surrounding area”, Mr. Stutler said, “had anyone seen the combination of severe drought, fire on the landscape, and an extreme wind event” occurring at the same time.
Combined with a wildland/urban interface, it was the “perfect storm”, he explained. The review team concluded that the fire management officials did not see the potential for the low-frequency, high-risk event.
“The review team concluded that a lack of wildland fire preparedness during a period of drought conditions favorable to wildfires overwhelmed National Park Service response to the CT2 fire. Though the review team concluded that the firefighting decisions made by the personnel involved were commensurate within their knowledge and experience in fighting wildland fires in the region, this report recommends enhanced preparedness and fire planning based on fire-conditions assessments, and adherence to the National Park Service wildland fire program and policies. These recommendations will likely enhance the capability of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to respond to a wildfire event with similar or greater fire weather conditions in the future.”
The report made recommendations, including:
Revise the park’s fire management plan to reflect more aggressive strategies and tactics during extreme fire weather conditions.
Expand communications capacity to allow interoperability with responders outside the federal system.
The Fire Management Officer should be supervised by a single individual, not two.
Since no Red Flag Warnings were issued around the time of the fire, evaluate current Red Flag Warning and advisory criteria to reflect conditions experienced during the 2016 fire season.
The National Park Service leadership should embrace and institute change to create wildland fire management organizations that have the capacity and resilience to meet the realities of this “new normal” fire behavior.
Institute formal fire management officer and agency administrator mentoring and/or development programs.
(The article was edited on December 7, 2019 to show that Joe Stutler is currently working for the U.S. Forest Service.)
Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Bob. Typos or errors, report them HERE.
L to R: Pete Kilman, Marvin Rolen, Tim Baker, John Satterfield, Heidi Satterfield, Dolly Parton, Joe Fields, Stephen Walley, Chris Young, Tony Patty, John Linsenbigler. Photo: Curtis Hilbun.
About 48 hours after the Chimney Tops 2 Fire spread from Great Smoky Mountains National Park into Gatlinburg, Tennessee November 28, 2016 burning 2,400 structures and 17,000 acres, country music artist Dolly Parton established the My People Fund.
In the weeks and months that followed, the fund provided $1,000 each month for six months to Sevier County families whose homes were uninhabitable or were completely destroyed in that fire and a few others that burned at the same. Any family that lost their primary residence (renters and homeowners) due to the wildfires in the county were eligible. Thanks to a tremendous outpouring of donations, the final distribution checks were $5,000 per family.
As if that were not enough, Ms. Parton continued with the generosity on March 16, 2019 when she met with the Fire Chiefs of the fire departments in Sevier County. In recognition of their roles in fighting the fires of 2016, the My People Fund donated the remaining dollars in the account — $20,000 to each volunteer fire department and $40,000 to their area training center.
Falling trees caused 18 fatalities of wildland firefighters between 1990 and 2014 but it’s not supposed to happen to visitors in National Parks.
While a family was hiking on a trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee on December 27 part of a tree fell killing the mother, Laila Jiwani, a 42-year-old pediatrician from Plano, Texas and injuring her 6-year-old son.
Below is an excerpt from an article at Knox News:
Her husband, Taufiq Jiwani, said Jiwani died “immediately upon the severity of the impact.”
The couple was hiking in the park with their three sons. One of the sons, Jibran, was also injured by the tree, which broke his leg in two places and caused “superficial head injuries,” according to the post.
Jibran, 6, was airlifted to the UT Medical Center with non-life threatening injuries, according to Litterst. He underwent surgery and was scheduled to be discharged on Saturday, according to the Facebook post.
“Doctors said that Laila saved Jibran’s life by taking the brunt of the impact,” Taufiq Jiwani wrote on Facebook.
Our sincere condolences go out to the Jiwani family.
And firefighters … be careful out there.
A hazardous tree on the Dudley Fire in Buffalo Gap, SD, March 3, 2016.
An After Action Review has been released for the Chimney Tops 2 Fire that spread from Great Smoky Mountains National Park into the city of Gatlinburg, Tennessee a little over a year ago killing 14 people, forcing 14,000 to evacuate, destroying or damaging 2,500 structures, and burning 17,000 acres. The AAR, completed by ABS Group, was commissioned by Gatlinburg and Sevier County.
14 people were killed and 2,500 structures were damaged or destroyed.
Above: Chimney Tops 2 Fire at 9:37 p.m. November 28, 2016 after it had burned into Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Screenshot from the Knox News video.
(Originally published at 11:04 a.m. MST November 23, 2017)
As the one year anniversary of the deadly Chimney Tops 2 Fire approaches, Knox News will be publishing a series of articles about the fire that burned into Gatlinburg, Tennessee on November 28, 2016 killing 14 people, forcing 14,000 to evacuate, destroying or damaging 2,500 structures, and blackening 17,000 acres. Part 1 appeared yesterday along with the video below that includes interviews with first responders and residents, 911 recordings, and dash cam imagery of the fire in Gatlinburg.
Among other issues that came to light about how the fire was managed, the video has an example related to the evacuation. At 7:12 p.m. on November 28 the Gatlinburg Fire Department Captain that was the commander at the time of the firefighting forces working the wildfire in the city, recommended that the single siren, intended to be used for flood warnings, be activated to notify residents and tourists to evacuate. It was not done. Twice more he made the recommendation, at 7:15 and 7:50, but the 911 recordings did not detect a reply. At 8:20 p.m. the Fire Chief ordered a complete evacuation of the city and at 8:30 the siren was activated.
The article has quotes from a piece that we wrote on June 13, 2016 about the decisions made by Great Smoky Mountains National Park personnel during the first five days while the fire was much smaller.
Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Erik. Typos or errors, report them HERE.
