By Matt Lakin
The Knoxville News-Sentinel (Tennessee)
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Forestry firefighters in East Tennessee spent another hot, dry day battling four wildfires around the Knoxville area Tuesday.
“It’s not a good day to be fighting fires,” said Ted Dailey, district forester. “We’re still over 4 inches below normal for rainfall. We haven’t had precipitation in most of the Knoxville area in about 10 days. The fuels and grasses are drying out, and the humidity’s low. It’s a bad combination.”
He said officials worried most about a wildfire reported Tuesday afternoon on Chilhowee Mountain off Allegheny Loop Road in Blount County. That’s the same mountain where firefighters recently spent almost a week battling an earlier blaze, although in a different spot.
“They’re valiantly trying to cut that thing off before it gets up the mountain,” Dailey said. “It may well be a 2,000-, 3,000-acre fire if they don’t get it stopped.”
The fire posed no immediate threat to nearby homes, he said.
Smoke from a fire near Jellico in Campbell County on the Tennessee-Kentucky line slowed traffic on Interstate 75 North to a crawl Tuesday afternoon as drivers hit the brakes to stare. Dailey said that fire apparently started from a burning car the day before.
The Jellico fire and another near Norris Lake burned about 45 total acres, he estimated.
“We’ve had two in Campbell County, and we’ve been on both fires today,” Dailey said. “We believe they’re contained and controlled, but the one off the interstate is still pouring out quite a bit of smoke.”
A fourth fire in Morgan County, near the Obed River, made for another headache. Firefighters believe they’ve contained it to about 10-15 acres.
East Tennessee’s rough terrain can make for an uneven battle as flames spread up a mountainside faster than firefighters can dig fire breaks.
“It’s so steep and rocky in some of these places that there are very few containment lines you can get up the mountain,” Dailey said. “By the time you get from the bottom to the top, it’s taken in quite a bit of acreage.”
More than 13,000 acres have burned statewide this year, with about 90 percent of the damage concentrated in East Tennessee, according to the state Division of Forestry. That’s including more than 4,500 acres burned in the Knoxville forestry district, which includes 12 counties.
Firefighters say the trees and brush still haven’t recovered from last year’s recordsetting drought. Last year saw thousands of wildfires, compared to a little more than 700 so far this year.
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