By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Andrew Kalmar had planned to wake up in the Smoky Mountains today, perhaps taking one last hike in the forest before coming home to Bowling Green.
Instead, he was walking the track at the Bowling Green Community Center.
Kalmar and Cathy Zwyer were among the thousands of people evacuated from the Gatlinburg, Tennessee, area as wildfires tore through the mountains and resort community. The fires are blamed for killing at least seven people and destroying more than 150 buildings.
The two had rented a cabin outside Gatlinburg, and had arrived on Saturday. The first hint they had of something amiss came Monday morning when smoke could be smelled in the clear mountain air and bits of ash were falling from the sky. “As the morning went on, the sky turned yellow,” said Kalmar, Wood County’s administrator.
When they ate lunch in Gatlinburg, the restaurant staff was clearly concerned. “It was like fog in the streets,” he said. The resort town’s chair lift, tramway and aquarium were closed.
Kalmar contacted the park service and was told not to worry, the wildfire was on a mountain 10 miles away from their cabin.
Later in the day, Kalmar and Zwyer stopped at a store in nearby Sevierville, where the clerk told them Gatlinburg was being evacuated. When they arrived back to their cabin, the wind had picked up to 40 mph with gusts up to 60 mph.
“The wind was just howling,” Kalmar said. “It was just roaring between the trees.”
Then after 9 p.m., there was a pounding on their door. They were told the fire had moved quickly and they needed to evacuate. “We packed up as fast as we could,” he said. “I had to clear tree branches from the car.”
Kalmar had been using GPS to navigate the area. But cell service and satellite GPS were down, so he did his best to remember how to get out of the area. There were several trees in the road. At one point, the fire was bearing down the mountain as they tried to evacuate.
“There were fires on both sides of the road,” he said. So they turned around and tried another route. “We snaked our way through traffic to make our way out.”
Kalmar said that Zwyer tried to take photos of the wildfires, but “all you could see is the glow” of the blazes along the road.
“It literally roared through the trees,” he said. “I will remember our trip to Gatlinburg every time I get in the car. It smells like a campfire inside.”
The wildfires were fueled by all the dry brush and leaves on the ground from drought conditions in the area. On Tuesday night, thunderstorms brought some much-needed rain to the region. But the mandatory evacuation order remained in place for Gatlinburg on Wednesday as firefighters monitored a few remaining hot spots in the area near the Great Smoky Mountains.
More than 14,000 residents and tourists were forced to evacuate the tourist city, according to the Associated Press. Search and rescue efforts continued in areas that had been unreachable because of downed power lines and trees.
