As Gatlinburg Fire Death Toll Rises, Evacuation Procedures Are Now Being Questioned

Updated Sunday:

Emergency officials say an evacuation alert by text message did not go out as planned in Gatlinburg. As of this weekend, local and state officials disagreed as to whether mobile devices were ever alerted as a deadly wildfire blew through the resort town.

Agencies at all levels now confirm there was a “communication failure.”

A joint statement explains that the local command post contacted state authorities to initiate a text alert but their communication was interrupted due to disabled phone, internet and electrical services.

Because of the disconnect, even the National Weather Service was unable to reach the local command post. An evacuation alert did go out over radio and television. And later that evening, a text alert did eventually go out. But that message told people in Gatlinburg to limit their cell phone use so signals wouldn’t get jammed for first-responders.

Reported Earlier:

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. A press conference Friday morning was abruptly ended after the focus veered into the initial response.

“What we’re getting into is folks who don’t know this area and Monday morning quarterbacking, and we’re not going to get into that right now,” Sevier County Mayor Larry Waters said as he stepped to the podium to end the questioning.

Waters said responders did the best they could as 14,000 people were forced to flee, some of them through a tunnel of flames.

Contrary to
reports, Sevier County Emergency Management director John Mathews said a text alert was sent to mobile phones at 9:04 p.m. Whether they were received is hard to know.

“There were power outages. We lost cell phone reception,” Mathews said. “This is a huge disaster, so the things that we have in place to do that certainly have redundancies. And those redundancies were even affected.”

The timing of the evacuation order is also being scrutinized.

Previously, Gatlinburg’s fire chief has admitted that the Chimney Tops Fire grew faster than anyone could have imagined as hurricane-force winds scattered embers up to a mile, igniting new blazes.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park learned of the fire in the middle of last week. Park superintendent Cassius Cash said it was “a slow, creeping fire,” but the decision was still made to put “resources” on it the day after it was discovered. 

The area is rocky and remote, so Cash said it wasn’t possible to put up conventional fire lines. As late as Sunday, four helicopters were conducting water drops. Cash said they knew high winds were coming, but they came much earlier than expected.

“We had the appropriate amount of resources to fight that fire in an aggressive, but still safe manner,” he said. “It wasn’t dropping the ball.”

Asked why he didn’t order an evacuation of Gatlinburg, Cash said that was outside his jurisdiction. The final decision, he said, was made jointly.