Here's the news from East Tennessee, for those who are still following the story of the worst in a century wildfires that threatened to take all of Gatlinburg, a resort town east of Knoxville.
First things first: the death toll remains at 13, as workers carefully pick their way through the 1,000 businesses, homes, etc., that burned or were damaged. One of those lost was the Rev. Ed Taylor, the man who pretty much put this lovely corner of East Tennessee on the map as a site for weddings.
The other news is that we are in having a long, stead, soaking rain here and there is more rain in the forecast. The winds remain rather high, however, and the local authorities stress that the fires in the Great Smoky Mountains burned deep down into the ground cover and roots of these old forests. (For those who missed my earlier post on this topic, my family lives in Oak Ridge, which is up against the face of the Cumberland Mountains to the west of the fires.)
As you would expect, here in Bible Belt territory, there continue to be religion angles in many of the stories linked to the fires.
A reader sent me this CNN report, which I thought was interesting – but had a rather important factual hole in it. The grabber headline proclaimed:
"Statue of Jesus only thing left standing in house burned by Tennessee wildfire."
Now, I grew up in tornado alley along the Texas-Oklahoma border and I have seen some rather strange – some would say miraculous – things in the wake of storms and other powerful natural disasters. I have seen (with my young eyes, in this case) a whole neighborhood leveled, except for the undamaged church in the middle. Or then there's the house that vanishes, except for the closet containing three children hiding under a mattress.
Well, in this case we are talking about something else:
