As Damage Is Tallied In Gatlinburg Fires, Residents Still Don’t Know If Their Homes Survived

Although much of the mountain resort towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge were unscathed, Monday night’s wildfires destroyed at least 700 buildings. Many people who lost their homes don’t know it yet. They’re still waiting to be allowed back into their neighborhoods.

To look a forest fire in the eye is a harrowing experience, and not one that restaurant worker Rufus Surles wishes to repeat.

“I’ve never, ever, ever, ever seen anything as scary,” he said. “You can’t outrun a fire.”

Surles says he evacuated late during the forest fires in the Smoky Mountains and grabbed a ride to a shelter in a cop car. “And on the way here, I’m telling you, on both sides of the road, it was a wall of flames. The wind was blowing 70, 80 miles an hour. The fire was blowing across the road.”

James Tweedle saw this too as he evacuated with his wife.

“You could feel the heat and ash,” he said. “The best way to describe it is like you were at the gates of hell.”

Tweedle spent the night in a sports complex in Gatlinburg that was converted into a temporary shelter. About 200 people are in shelters, down from more than 1,000 Monday night. Many of those who remain, like Tweedle, are still under strict evacuation orders.

He’s hopeful, but not certain, his home is still there. “We’re 99 percent sure it is, but we really don’t know, won’t know, until we lay eyeballs on it.”

Throughout the shelter in Gatlinburg, there’s a palpable uncertainty of whether things will be perfectly normal when they return or whether they will have nothing left.

“I do not know if my house is still standing,” said Terrylynn Battson, who evacuated with her 83-year-old mother. “I live a mile from here, it’s very frustrating.”

Yet certainty might not be any comfort — because some simply know their homes burned to the ground.

“Yeah, I got confirmation from a cell phone picture. My house is gone,” said Anthony Reynolds, who was walking around the shelter. “We got out with what we got on.”

Reynolds made it out with his wife, daughter and grandkids. He didn’t have time to collect their dogs. He wasn’t expecting the fire to jump to his side of the mountain, but the winds shifted, and it set a path toward his house.

“Within 10 minutes, fire was literally crawling up my road up my mountain,” he said.