Alaska firefighters in Tennessee at site of deadly Gatlinburg fire

Alaska firefighters helping respond to the fire that devastated a Tennessee town this week, amid wildfires that have killed several people in that state, were getting a reprieve from duty Wednesday after battling two other blazes.

Zane Brown, a Fairbanks fire crew boss with the Alaska Division of Forestry, said that he and several other firefighters from Alaska were staying at a hotel near Gatlinburg, Tennessee, on Wednesday. His "module" of nine people was sent to fight the Chimney Tops fire that began Monday evening and destroyed at least 150 buildings in Gatlinburg, temporarily trapping some people inside a 300-room hotel.

On Wednesday, the fire stood at 15,653 acres and was only 10 percent contained. Although the Alaskans had been set to join its fireline Wednesday morning, weather conditions changed those plans.

"There was heavy rain all day today," Brown said. "We'll be going out to the line tomorrow."

The Gatlinburg crew is among 88 Alaskans, two-thirds of them Forestry Division employees, still deployed Wednesday across several Southern states to help fight fires following severe droughts, according to the federal Alaska Fire Service. Spokesman Tim Mowry said about 20 members of that group are currently in Tennessee.

Alaska's below-average wildfire season this year left many of the state's firefighters, including Brown, shifted to other areas across the U.S. According to Mowry, most Alaska wildfire crews are furloughed after the state's traditional fire season from May to mid-August, but can volunteer for additional work at Outside fires in the off-season.

Brown fought some Alaska wildfires, but also spent some time in California as a division supervisor with crews fighting August's massive Soberanes Fire in California. Asked why he signed on to fight the Southern fires, Brown said, "It's my job."

"I was already signed out for the season, but I got a call from Fairbanks that they needed help," Brown said. "That's what we do; we're firemen, we're here to help."

Mowry, who just spent two weeks including the Thanksgiving weekend deployed to the 8,000-acre Maple Springs Fire in North Carolina, said many of the Southern fires are believed to be human-caused. Dry conditions and a "wind event" that brought 80-mph winds to Tennessee have helped spread low-level burns, which Mowry likened to grass-fires moving through foliage.

"They're still in their fall season down there — leaves are falling off trees, so there's this perpetual fuel source," Mowry said. "They're just these forest-floor fires — they're not necessarily burning down trees."

The module Brown ended up with included nine men, among them five former state Hotshot crew members. The others, including a former Alaska smokejumper, are from the Alaska Fire Service, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service.

During Brown's 11 days in the state, his team has spent time fighting the East Miller Cove Fire, which Brown said is now at 95 percent containment, and the Stony Fork Fire, which is now both contained and controlled. The group left that fire Tuesday.

"It was pretty intense — we had 40- to 60-mph winds on these mountaintops," Brown said. "When you have winds and fuels like that, there's not much you can do; you just pull your people back to safe areas."

According to Brown the fire conditions in Tennessee aren't as severe as those he's seen at home, where entire black spruce trees can be torched in a wildfire and rapidly spread embers to new areas.

"The fire behavior in Alaska is a lot more extreme and intense than it is up here," Brown said. "The main carrier of these fires is the grasses, and then needles from the pines and the hardwood — in comparison with what we deal with in Alaska, this is a lot easier to deal with than black spruce."

Tennessee's main challenge in fighting wildfires, Brown said, is a lack of backup assets like air support crews he can routinely count on in Alaska. The destruction around Gatlinburg resembles "a war zone," Brown said, with multiple hotels in the town completely burned out.

"You wouldn't think it was a fire," Brown said. "You look up at the black mountainside, and it looks bombed out."

On Thursday, Brown's team will likely be assigned to help clear burned trees and move them off area roads. He said little more than recovery work remains in Gatlinburg, with little else left to burn in the town.

Prior to Wednesday's downpour, the Alaska team sent to Gatlinburg had been asked to extend their time beyond their typical two-week deployment, minus their travel time to and from home.

"We were asked to stay another 14 days, but that was before this massive rain," Brown said. "My guess is that we'll probably begin to demobilize the Alaska resources by Saturday."