Tennessee Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

News Investigation Reveals Missteps In Response To 2016 Smokies Fire

A newspaper investigation has revealed that National Park Service officials underestimated the severity of the 2016 Great Smoky Mountains National Park wildfire, and were slow to alert Tennessee officials about the danger. Tyler Whetstone is an investigative reporter at the Knoxville News Sentinel/Knox News. Inside Appalachia Host Mason Adams spoke with Whetstone to learn more.

This conversation was originally heard on the Feb. 4, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.

In November 2016, a wildfire escaped from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park into the nearby tourist towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. At least 14 people were killed and 190 injured, and more than 14,000 residents and tourists had to be evacuated out of the area.

Now, a newspaper investigation has revealed that National Park Service officials underestimated the severity of the wildfire, and were slow to alert Tennessee officials about the danger.

Tyler Whetstone is an investigative reporter at the Knoxville News Sentinel/Knox News. Inside Appalachia Host Mason Adams spoke with Whetstone to learn more.

The transcript below has been edited for clarity and length. For more, listen to the full interview on Inside Appalachia or via the streaming widget above.

An aerial view shows the destruction at Westgate Smoky Mountain Resort and Spa the day after a wildfire hit Gatlinburg on Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016, in Sevier County.

*Credit: Knox News*

Adams: Can you refresh our memory on that 2016 fire and what happened with it?

Whetstone: You have to remember, in 2016 there was an exceptional drought, one of the worst droughts in state [Tennessee] history. The region was in a pretty severe drought in the Carolinas, Virginia and Georgia. So it was peak fire season, more so than normal. This wildfire just happened to be in a perfect storm of sorts.

It began Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, in November 2016. The park was severely understaffed because of the holiday. You had people who were new to management positions that didn’t want to tell people not to take off for the holiday. The fire was up high in Chimney Tops, which is a weird peak in the Smokies. I think when most people think of the Smokies, they think of rolling hills and tree-topped mountains. The Chimney Tops is pretty much the only peak in the park that’s rocky. The fire started way up top. It was in a spot that really couldn’t be taken care of or could be fought. So they let it burn out. That was the plan — except that it didn’t, obviously.

The day the fire blew out of the park into Gatlinburg had a number of things that went wrong outside of just park officials not letting Gatlinburg know what was going on. You have what’s called a “mountain wave,” which some people may be familiar with. It’s certain times of year, typically in late November in the Smokies, where you have phenomenal winds that will blow through. We had wind gusts well over 85, 90 mph. That Monday, it just blew the fire, that had been largely contained to the park, well outside of the park and through Gatlinburg. Other branches of it spotted fires up through Pigeon Forge, outside of Dollywood.

At the end of the day, 14 people died. Hundreds were injured and something like 2,000 buildings were destroyed.

Adams: You’ve been looking into the National Park Service’s initial response to this fire. What gave you the idea for this investigation, and how did you go about doing it?

Whetstone: I’d been writing about the wildfire. I was there the night that it happened, at least in Pigeon Forge. You couldn’t get into Gatlinburg. Emergency crews wouldn’t let you get into Gatlinburg, which was probably a good call. So, it’s something that I’ve been working on and off for seven years. In the last two years, I really kind of spearheaded our reporting on that and continue to follow a federal lawsuit against the park service the victims of the fire filed. I got a new set of documents — 1,500 pages of federal records that we hadn’t previously seen — from a source, and those records really spawned the effort.

Knox News investigative reporter Tyler Whetstone.

*Credit: Knox News*

Adams: Tell me a little bit about what y’all found in all those documents.

Whetstone: There’s really three findings. The first is, early on, the date that the fire broke out of the park, park officials were saying on the radio that the fire could leave the park and go as far as Ski Mountain. If you’re familiar with Gatlinburg, Ski Mountain is on the far end of town near the park, but it kind of winds its way around the city. It’s where a lot of residents live. It would have been another three or four hours before park officials let the city know that the fire could leave the park, but they never said “Ski Mountain.” City officials thought it would be in one place and were never given the heads-up that it could go to an entirely different place, and that’s where most of the deaths occurred, unfortunately.

The second story was, the man in charge of the fire — the fire management officer, the guy who’s in charge of the response, and in charge of how the fire is handled — his name is Greg Salansky. Greg texted another park official on Saturday, saying basically that the park should be prepared because “Monday might get exciting.” And Monday, of course, was not just exciting, it was awful and ended up being a lot worse than Greg was expecting. So it calls into question some of the decisions. The park service never had anyone watch the fire overnight, any of the five nights it burned, which experts in wildland fires will tell you is a no-no. You always want to have someone watching the fire just in case it blows out of the park, or grows, or just to get an idea of what’s going on.

Then lastly, we had obtained an audio recording of park superintendent Cassius Cash receiving a call early Sunday morning at 3 a.m. It’s a weird call because he answers the phone, and it’s a police dispatch telling him that the fire had grown. And Cash assumed that it hadn’t. But he didn’t check with anyone, he just downplayed it and said, it’s not a big deal to worry about it, it’s a small thing. But if you’re in charge of the park, and a fire is reported to have grown tenfold at least over a couple of hours, it’s something that you need to check out. That’s what wildland fire experts told me. It’s something that the park officials were not ready to do. They were not used to these types of events, not used to this type of fire certainly. And just one mistake after another unfortunately, led to a pretty awful, awful week.

The Gatlinburg Fire Of 2016, Inside Appalachia

This week on Inside Appalachia, a wildfire in 2016 escaped the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It killed 14 people, injured dozens more and destroyed parts of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. We talk with an investigative journalist who has new information on the incident. Also, four decades ago rice seeds from Laos crossed the ocean to California and made their way to a family of Hmong farmers in North Carolina. And the Appalachian trail has been exhaustively hiked, explored and written about, but it’s still got a few secrets left.

In 2016, a wildfire escaped the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It killed 14 people, injured dozens more and destroyed parts of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. We talk with an investigative journalist who has new information on the incident.

Also, four decades ago rice seeds from Laos crossed the ocean to California and made their way to a family of Hmong farmers in North Carolina.

And the Appalachian trail has been exhaustively hiked, explored and written about, but it’s still got a few secrets left.

You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.

In This Episode:

Investigating The Gatlinburg Fire Of 2016
The Sweet Sticky Rice Of Western North Carolina
Save The Salamanders!
An Appalachian Trail Mystery

Investigating The Gatlinburg Fire Of 2016

In 2016, a wildfire at Chimney Tops in Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee spread beyond the park boundaries into the nearby tourist towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. At least 14 people were killed. Many more were injured and thousands of residents and tourists had to be evacuated.

A new investigation revealed that National Park Service officials underestimated the severity of the wildfire and were slow to alert Tennessee officials about the danger.

Tyler Whetstone, an investigative reporter, spoke with Mason Adams about his reporting.

The Sweet Sticky Rice Of Western North Carolina

Tou Lee holds sweet sticky rice stalks in his rice field in Morganton, North Carolina.

*Credit: Rachel Moore/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

When you think of rice, you might not think of Western North Carolina. But the area is home to several varieties of heirloom rice that made their way here from Laos nearly five decades ago. The rice was carried and cultivated by Hmong refugees.

One family now sells their rice at markets and to restaurants, and they’ve built a passionate following.

Folkways Reporter Rachel Moore has this story.

Save The Salamanders!

The West Virginia spring salamander.

*Credit: U.S. Geological Survey*

Have you ever heard of a West Virginia spring salamander? They’re a species found in the General Davis Cave in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, but there are only a few hundred left.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to put the West Virginia spring salamander on the endangered species list.

WVPB’s Curtis Tate spoke with Will Harlan, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.

An Appalachian Trail Mystery

The Appalachian Trail was completed in 1927. For 25 years, hikers took to the trail and traveled along the mountains from Georgia to Maine, but then the trail was moved. And the old trail was nearly forgotten.

Historian and podcaster Mills Kelly discovered the lost trail and wrote about it in his new book, Virginia’s Lost Appalachian Trail.

WMRA’s Chris Boros speaks to Kelly about rediscovering the trail.

——

Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by David Mayfield, Chris Knight, John Blissard, John Inghram, Eric Vincent Huey and Steve Earle.

Bill Lynch is our producer. Zander Aloi is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens.

You can send us an email: InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.

You can find us on Instagram, Threads and Twitter @InAppalachia. Or here on Facebook.

Sign-up for the Inside Appalachia Newsletter!

Inside Appalachia is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

Following Daniel Boone’s Trail Leads To Appalachia Understanding In New Book

In 2013, Jim Dahlman, a journalist and professor of communications at Milligan College in Tennessee, set out to learn more about Appalachia by walking Daniel Boone’s Wilderness Road from Tennessee into Kentucky.

The walk inspired the recently published book “A Familiar Wilderness: Searching for Home on Daniel Boone’s Road.” It is a collection of history, modern observations and interviews with people Dahlman met along the way.

In March of 1775, trapper and explorer Daniel Boone set off from what is now Kingsport, Tennessee to blaze a trail through the recently purchased Transylvania Land Company tract. At the time, Kentucky was regarded as the wilderness. It was up to Boone to mark a trail for settlers to travel through the Cumberland Gap.

Dahlman explained he walked between 275 and 300 miles. He started at Sycamore Shoals State Park just outside of Elizabethtown, Tennessee and ended at Fort Boonesborough, Kentucky. He said his journey was very different than hiking the Appalachian Trail.

“About 90 percent of my mileage was along the sides of highways. I walked a lot of asphalt because this road that Boone traced back in 1775 became the basis of very popular travel paths,” Dahlman said. “And over time they grew up to be overwritten and became the basis of a lot of our road systems.”

The decision to walk Boone’s “trace,” as it is properly called, came from Dahlman’s journalistic curiosity. He wanted to understand what the 240-year-old path meant to the people living along it today. He added that he had lived in the area 13 years at the time, but still did not feel at home. He grew up in New York City and Tampa, Florida, and as an adult he lived in several states and in England.

“I don’t know what home was actually supposed to feel like but it felt like I wasn’t quite there yet,” he said. “And so the trip became, in part, a personal desire to get to know my adopted region better.”

He said he learned several lessons about Appalachia on his trip.

“Appalachia is more diverse than a lot of people give it credit for,” Dahlman said. “There’s a lot of diversity in the way people think — attitudes about everything from belief in God, to their attitudes about the land, a lot of diversity in economic situations.”

May 23, 1862: The Battle of Lewisburg Fought in Greenbrier County

On May 23, 1862, the Battle of Lewisburg was fought in Greenbrier County. It occurred as Union troops were moving from Western Virginia toward Tennessee in the spring of 1862. Union General John C. Frémont planned to move his forces southwest from Monterey, Virginia, to the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad near Christiansburg. There, Frémont was to connect with troops under General Jacob Cox.

Fremont, however, got detained by fighting in the Shenandoah Valley. Cox, not realizing the plan had fallen apart, transferred one his four brigades to Lewisburg. The 1,600-man brigade, under General George Crook, was unknowingly vulnerable to attack from Confederate General Henry Heth.

On the morning of May 23, Heth’s 2,200 Confederate troops attacked Crook’s position at Lewisburg. Despite facing superior numbers, Crook and his men repelled the advance, killing 38, wounding 66, and reportedly capturing nearly 100. Crook lost only 13 of his own men. Although the Union victory at Lewisburg was widely reported and a boost to waning Northern morale, its importance was overshadowed by Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s legendary Shenandoah Valley Campaign, which was occurring at the same time.

Tennessee Lawmakers Want to Give Appalachian Dialect Its Due Respect

It’s pronounced “app-uh-latch-uh,” not “app-uh-lay-sha.”

Lawmakers give the pronunciation lesson in a resolution calling for an official state manual called the Tennessee Blue Book to discuss how people in Appalachia talk. A Senate panel advanced the proposal Tuesday.

The push by Republican Sen. Steve Southerland of Morristown says Appalachian people are often misrepresented and misunderstood by society, and their dialect is often disparaged.

The resolution counters that Appalachian is a “fully legitimate dialect and most deserving of the respect afforded other dialects of American English.”

The resolution links Appalachian linguistics to early influencers. It says a “pone” of cornbread is borrowed from the Native American language Algonquian; having “boo coos” of something links to the French “beaucoup;” and that “might could” is a compound helping verb influenced by the Scotch-Irish.

“I liketa have all of you all vote for it,” Southerland told the Senate committee. “‘All of you all’ is plural to y’all,” he added, drawing some laughs.

The resolution also ties the speech of Appalachia to other parts of the country, noting that Tennessean Davy Crockett and other Appalachians traveled to parts of Texas, likely bringing the construction “liketa” with them.

As defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission, the 205,000-square-mile region traces the Appalachian Mountains from southern New York to northern Mississippi, including all of West Virginia and parts of 12 other states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.

The resolution calls for Appalachian lingo to be covered in the Tennessee Blue Book, published every two years by the Secretary of State’s office. It serves as a manual on the state and its government, and includes a section named “A History of Tennessee: The Land and Native People.”

Republican Rep. Jeremy Faison of Cosby, who is pushing the resolution in the House, said people might think it’s a little bit funny, but they’re fascinated when they start hearing the history.

“The Appalachian language is the oldest language in the state of Tennessee, and it has rich history all throughout America that stretches all the way from New England to Texas,” Faison said. “Our dialect is a beautiful dialect, and I want it to be honored in our Blue Book.”