Have an escape plan
At a special called “fiscal” year-end meeting last week, the Mitchell County Board of Commissioners focused mainly on disaster recovery issues: Fire danger caused by the trees knocked down by Hurricane Helene (downgraded to a tropical storm after slowing down over land) and recovery funding.
Wildfire summit
County Manager Allen Cook gave the board an update on ongoing wildfire danger in Mitchell County. Cook recently attended a wildfire summit to learn about wildfire preparation.
“We had a speaker that was the Sevier County Fire Chief, and they talked about the fire that occurred in Gatlinburg, Tennessee that took 14 lives and damaged and destroyed 2,500 homes,” Cook said. “To put a point of comparison … this Gatlinburg fire, it started five miles away from Gatlinburg in a relatively contained area.”
The 2016 Great Smoky Mountains Wildfires caused considerable damage in both Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
“It had to climb about two mountains to get to Gatlinburg,” Cook said. “On the Wednesday and Thursday of Thanksgiving week (2016) … it was closed in to a couple hundred acres five miles west of Gatlinburg, with no sign of being a threat.”
Cook said the fire danger changed abruptly owing to a change in the weather.
“From Sunday morning to Monday, in a 24-hour period, that fire runs five miles approximately and basically destroys a lot of Gatlinburg,” he said.
Cook said one of the things he had learned from the summit was the importance of having avenues of communication with tourists and temporary visitors who might not be aware that there is a danger of wildfire because they are not connected to local news sources.
“When it’s jumping one mile with ashes blowing down, we will not be able to keep in front of it,” he said. “As a citizen … know that you got to have a plan, maybe have you a bag ready to where you can get out quick, because we have one of the highest fuel loads on the ground in Helene’s path.”
Finance & FEMA
The commissioners discussed the unusual issues involved in closing out the 2025-26 financial year with a large number of budget amendments based on disaster recovery expenses and reimbursements from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Cook explained that the county has been relying on a cash-flow loan from the state of North Carolina to make ends meet in the short term.
“We’re waiting on FEMA reimbursements — they’re coming, but sometimes they’re three to six months out,” Cook said. “We don’t know what the time frame is, so we have to take this zero-interest cash flow loan from the state in order to where we’re not cutting into our fund balance that runs the essential operations of the government.”
Cook noted that the county has five years in which to pay back the state loans.
“As FEMA reimburses us, we will in turn reimburse the state for those cash-flow loans,” he said.
Resiliency grant
Cook announced that the recently formed Mitchell County Long-Term Resiliency Group has received a grant that will allow it to operate with a sustainable payroll.
“As you all recall, this board voted a memorandum of support, a resolution of support for Mitchell County long-term disaster recovery,” Cook said. “Well, this long-term disaster recovery group, with the help of our VOADs, our volunteer organizations that came in early on in the storm said that you need to set up a volunteer group that can help Mitchell County residents going forward long-term.”
A volunteer group was organized, but it lacked funding to hire long-term staff.
“And so, they applied for the Red Cross grant,” Cook said. “They got … $1 million for long-term disaster recovery in Mitchell County.”