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National Fire Plan Success Story

Managing Fire Safely and Cost-Effectively
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee
National Fire Plan - Firefighting
2010

Calderwood Fire.
The Calderwood Fire as it appeared on August 27, 2010, from Highway 129. Calderwood Lake is on the left.

Firefighter.
Firefighters used existing access roads as holding lines, mitigating the hazard of constructing extensive line over the steep ridgetop.

On August 16, 2010, Great Smoky Mountains National Park Deputy Superintendent Kevin FitzGerald approved a new fire management plan for the park. This action culminated 18 months of development and planning activities aimed at increasing the flexibility of the park’s response to wildland fire.

The following afternoon, a thunderstorm created an opportunity to exercise that flexibility. Just after 5:00 pm, a bolt of lightning found a receptive target on a ridgeline above the Calderwood Dam on the Little Tennessee River. Embers smoldered for days before becoming active enough for smoke to be reported to park headquarters. When firefighters hiked into the rough terrain, they discovered a 2.5-acre fire burning on private property owned by Tapoco, a power generation division of Alcoa.

Since the fire had the potential to burn onto parklands, National Park Service firefighters met with Tapoco staff and Tennessee Department of Agriculture, Division of Forestry personnel and agreed that the park would manage suppression efforts for the incident. In addition to the dam, other resources at risk included various power generation and administrative facilities, as well as traffic on Highway 129, a popular motorcycle route known as “The Tail of the Dragon.”

Park fire staff used existing roads as containment lines and allowed the fire to creep down from its ignition point on top of the ridge. Not only was this strategy safe and cost effective, it also allowed the fire to consume a significant amount of dead and down wood. This reduced hazardous fuel loading in the area, which will make future fires more manageable. By the time, the Calderwood Fire was fully contained, more than three weeks after it started 130 acres of Tapoco property and 160 acres of parkland had been treated.

Contact: David Loveland, Fire Management Specialist, (865) 430-4755.