Judge lifts blackout on wildfire records
For weeks, state officials sat on and kept secret a judge’s ruling that government records on the handling of the deadly Sevier County, Tenn., wildfire could be released to the public.
The order by Juvenile and General Sessions Court Judge Jeff Rader, filed June 5, came in response to the state attorney general’s request for clarification on what records the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency could release about the fire that killed 14 people.
Despite repeated inquiries, the state kept that decision quiet until the USA Today Network-Tennessee obtained a copy of the order through a public records request to the judge and the court clerk.
The judge, who will hear the case of the two teenagers accused of setting the blaze, said a gag order issued in the case applied only to prosecutors, defense lawyers and court officials — and to no one else.
The TEMA and various other agencies have cited the case for months in refusing to release records of the response to the wildfire. TEMA spokesman Dean Flener indicated the agency will comply with the ruling. He offered no timetable.
The only details the judge specifically barred from release were the names of the two teenage boys.
“The judge is spot-on,” said Deborah Fisher, director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, which promotes government transparency and access to public records.
“Keeping this information from the public has been detrimental to the people of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge who have gone through this tragedy, and it has been detrimental to the people and agencies who responded to it. We need to understand what happened so it can never happen again.”
BLAZE OF THE CENTURY
The fire began Nov. 23 in the Chimney Tops 2 section of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and swept into Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge five days later, fed by dry leaves and brush and whipped into a killing fury by winds that reached speeds of nearly 90 mph. What began as a fire covering about an acre-and-a-half ultimately spread to encompass more than 17,000 acres.
Besides the 14 people who died, nearly 200 more were hurt, and more than 2,400 buildings were leveled or otherwise damaged in the blaze, which Gov. Bill Haslam called the state’s worst in a century. Estimates place the total cost of the damage at nearly $1 billion. Local officials expect the recovery and rebuilding process to last more than a year.
Two boys from Anderson County — one 15, the other 17 at the time — face charges of starting the fire by playing with matches on the Chimney Tops trail. Because they’re charged in Juvenile Court, state law hides their names and most details of the proceedings against them from public view. Rader issued a gag order on the case to reinforce that secrecy.
The Knoxville News Sentinel, families of fire victims and others have filed public records requests with TEMA, the national park, Sevier County agencies and others for after-action reports and similar records that would offer insight into how the fire spread, why efforts to contain the flames failed and how Gatlinburg officials carried out the evacuation of the city. Firefighting experts have accused the park of mishandling the initial response to the blaze, which rangers allowed to burn for nearly a week before the windstorm hit, and local officials initially
downplayed the danger and didn’t use all available means to issue an evacuation alert.
A LEGAL LOCKDOWN
Authorities promptly began citing the Juvenile Court case as grounds for stonewalling questions on the response to the fire and its aftermath. Officials pointed to a letter sent out by 4th Judicial District Attorney General Jimmy Dunn before the fires were even cold that declared any release of information about any details of the wildfire could somehow “compromise” the case.
Reporters weren’t the only ones denied information. May Evelyn Norred Vance, 75, died of a heart attack from smoke inhalation as she and her husband of 53 years, Jimmy, fled the approaching flames. Her husband’s requests for records got nowhere.
“He really just wants to know what happened and how he and his wife ended up running for their lives from the fire,” said Vance’s attorney, Tricia Herzfeld. “The records we sought pertained only to questions about whether or not an evacuation order was issued. All the answers that we’ve gotten are denials due to the Juvenile Court case.”
But the law on Juvenile Court cases never applied to public records and other information on the fire itself and never should have been stretched to try to justify stifling public access to that information, the judge wrote in his order. Those records remain open, subject to the provisions of the state Public Records Act, the judge wrote.
“The order prohibiting disclosure of information … was intended only to address the actions of the parties to the causes of action currently pending before this court,” Rader wrote. “This court did not intend to direct or address the actions of any other entities or parties not specifically involved in these cases. … TEMA has not been ordered to provide nor precluded from providing any information pertaining to its duties under the Public Records Act.”
The only information specifically barred from release by law would be the teenage defendants’ names, the judge noted. Those names appear unredacted at the top of a copy of the judge’s gag order sent by TEMA when the agency denied the News Sentinel’s public records request months ago, as well as in subsequent records sent to the newspaper. The News Sentinel has chosen to withhold the names of the teens.
None of the records requested by the newspaper deal with any aspect of
the criminal case against the boys.
Flener, the TEMA spokesman, said the agency “will respond as soon as possible to the record requests we have.”
“Not all records are centrally located and will need to be acquired from other TEMA employees across the state,” he said. “Prior to any records being released, they will need to be reviewed for responsiveness and confidentiality. This process may involve hundreds of records, but it is underway.”
Gatlinburg and Sevier County officials apparently didn’t know about the judge’s decision until presented with it this week but said they’re now “reviewing” the ruling.
The decision came after the Tennessee attorney general’s office filed a petition in Juvenile Court asking the judge to clarify how TEMA and other state agencies should respond to the wave of public records requests that poured in after the fire. Deputy Attorney General Janet Kleinfelter, who wrote the petition, received a copy of the order, court records show. But despite repeated requests, no state or local agency acknowledged receiving the judge’s ruling — until confronted with a copy of it Monday.
“The prosecutor’s claim was always an overreach,” Fisher said. “The records requested have nothing to do with the criminal investigation. News organizations have been requesting these records to examine the response to the fire — whether the right thing was done and what can be learned. The judge has given state agencies and local governments the clarity they asked for. They should release the records requested, and release them now.
“As soon as they got the order, they should have begun releasing the records. The law requires the records be released ‘promptly,’ and we are way past promptly.”
Even if agencies honor the records requests already filed, some details could remain secret. Dunn, the prosecutor, obtained court orders sealing the autopsy reports and death certificates for all 14 people killed by the fire.
Because of the secrecy that surrounds Juvenile Court proceedings, Sevier Countians might never know what happens to the boys accused of starting the fire — whether they plead guilty or insist on their innocence, whether they’re offered deals, or whether they’re punished or set free.