First off, I grew up with firefighters. Every male before my brother and myself in our family started as firefighters and grew from there. I have heard some insane stories. The stuff I heard tonight was unreal.
He first mentioned about how he was on the main strip in Gatlinburg near Ripley's and that the fire was basically cresting where the big trolley is at. After 45 minutes of wetting down buildings to save the main strip, the fire had completely moved laterally to be equal to where Ripley's is. That has to be over 2 miles in 45 minutes. Pretty crazy for a fire not moving uphill. This is also while they fire on the other side of the strip was trying to push down straight at them.
He then went into a story about how all the emergency services were to use a single route (sory can remember that detail) to get in while civilians were using it to get out. With the fire pressing on both sides of the road, a car just started on fire and blocked the road for a bit. He mentioned it was right in front of a Knoxville crew and they got it out and pushed to the side so people could keep coming off. Could you imagine if they weren't able to move that car? He said there were at least 30 cars including emergency personnel that were just stuck. He mentioned he and his crew were just about a minute away from ditching the truck and trying to get to the stream hoping they would have enough oxygen to make it.
He also showed me a handful of pictures and video tonight that just dropped my jaw. I asked him to email me all the stuff and will hopefully get it in the morning to share.
Still unreal to have that basically in our back yard.
He first mentioned about how he was on the main strip in Gatlinburg near Ripley's and that the fire was basically cresting where the big trolley is at. After 45 minutes of wetting down buildings to save the main strip, the fire had completely moved laterally to be equal to where Ripley's is. That has to be over 2 miles in 45 minutes. Pretty crazy for a fire not moving uphill. This is also while they fire on the other side of the strip was trying to push down straight at them.
He then went into a story about how all the emergency services were to use a single route (sory can remember that detail) to get in while civilians were using it to get out. With the fire pressing on both sides of the road, a car just started on fire and blocked the road for a bit. He mentioned it was right in front of a Knoxville crew and they got it out and pushed to the side so people could keep coming off. Could you imagine if they weren't able to move that car? He said there were at least 30 cars including emergency personnel that were just stuck. He mentioned he and his crew were just about a minute away from ditching the truck and trying to get to the stream hoping they would have enough oxygen to make it.
He also showed me a handful of pictures and video tonight that just dropped my jaw. I asked him to email me all the stuff and will hopefully get it in the morning to share.
Still unreal to have that basically in our back yard.
