Posted on 11/29/2016 3:23:29 AM PST by C19fan
Terrified guests are trapped inside a burning Hilton hotel as a huge wildfire engulfs the Tennessee resort towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Dollywood theme park has been evacuated as thousands of tourists and residents fled the Great Smoky Mountains amidst reports of cars bursting into flames, dozens of homes being engulfed by fire, and the sky turning brown with smoke and flames.
Motorists clogged the roads after the Gatlinburg Fire Department ordered the mandatory evacuation of the town at just after 6pm on Monday, as strong wind conditions fanned the flames making the fire increasingly unpredictable and dangerous.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
They got good rain last night
http://m.accuweather.com/en/us/tennessee/weather-radar?play=1
I’ve driven through those places, and have been around forest fores. This is just terrible. :(
Are any US news sources covering this?
Oh my beloved mountains! We have spent so much time there hiking and fishing...just inhaling the handiwork of God
I know they will come back from the ashes; they always do.
Not sure it will be in my lifetime tho.
Smoke here has been awful. I’m just a short drive from Gatlinburg so I hope the rain put the fires out last night.
Sometimes the Lord adds, Adder, and sometimes the Lord subtracts.
It may be time that things that were dedicated to vanity come to an end. I pray and hope the people who were caught all escape safely, but I pray and hope that people will indeed think more of God and less of man’s works distanced from God.
Everybody
And perhaps not even that these things had any gross evil in themselves, but that now the Lord wanted to bring something better on the scene. So the old must perish and as cruel as it may seem to lose a venerated institution, the insurance carries the financial load and perhaps the management will invest in a different, new direction that it might not have otherwise considered.
Only good thing is that for the most part it’s only ground litter burning - which is bad enough as it is. That can be seen in the night films of the fire. But tons of smoke.
Few areas in the NC mountains are congested with brush like the canyon fires on the west coast.
Deadfalls from ice storms and wind have been a big problem, a lot of dry wood lying around, most of it pine since they’re the weakest, soft wood and shallow roots.
Thank God for the UK press.
There is really one main road into Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Many fond memories but once we got caught in a traffic jam between the two towns. Prayers for the folks caught in this mess. I hope they find the arsonist who did it.
Believe it or don’t but I was a major subcontractor on that hotel. I fabricated and installed all the glass and aluminum forming the exterior sheath.
I looked at the website for the Park Vista hotel and noted the addition of a large heavy timber porte cochre. That is what burned. The building is a cylinder, hollow in the center. It is all concrete so there is little to burn in the actual building. There were photos taken of fire thru the main entrance from inside out.
There are reports of buildings, especially at Arrowmont, downtown gatlinburg destroyed.
The fires are spread over considerable area. I suspect ISIS set the fires as they did in Israel
Or if it was Islamic Terrorists, the Lord had nothing to do with it at all.
That neighborhood with every single house burning to the ground was Chalet Village. It appears to be almost surrounded by Park Service land.
http://www.chaletvillage.com/images/pdfs/chaletvillagemap.pdf
“Are any US news sources covering this?”
I saw a preview on a local news channel but didn’t stay up to watch the actual segment. The preview said Gatlinburg was being evacuated...brief shot of heavy smoke, folks running around with cloths over their faces.
Wife and I looked at each other like “what the heck?”.
We’re in NC.
*Dollywood theme park has been evacuated*
Must be really, really big!
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