TENNESSEE

Couple unsure of a post-wildfire future in Gatlinburg

Kristi L Nelson
USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee

Susan Stocks can still climb the spiral stone staircase to the terrace that fronted her English-style bed-and-breakfast.From the stone patio, she can look out over Gatlinburg and hear the buzz of chainsaws, the roars and creaks of backhoes, the shouts of workers.

Two months after wildfires devastated the tourist town, men and machines are carrying off what the flames left.

It’s the same for Susan and husband Glenn, who’d owned the Tudor Inn on West Holly Ridge Road for five years before fire took it down. Digging through the remains of the building that had held not only their dreams for their future, but also priceless antiques and irreplaceable family mementos, the Stockses found very little to salvage. Outside under their apartment, in a bucket of ash they have yet to sift through, are small items including some of Susan’s jewelry, melted and charred.

In January, the Stockses got a demolition permit from the city of Gatlinburg — and a surprise. Excavation turned up two 1,500-gallon kerosene tanks underneath the building’s sunroom. Though long unused, there was still kerosene, which required an Environmental Protection Agency visit and someone from Knoxville to pump out the tanks before disposal. Because of the age of the inn — built in the 1970s — asbestos testing also had to precede demolition.

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“The longer process was just getting people lined up” to do the work in a town with so much work available, Susan Stocks said. “The (estimates) for demolition were phenomenal,” ranging from $28,000 to more than $60,000.

But by month’s end, all the rubble is gone, the lot smooth and straw-covered, the stone stairs and terrace the only thing standing.

As the weeks pass, the Stockses become less and less certain that anything built there in the future will belong to them. Already, two real estate agents have approached with inquiries about buying all the burned-out lots on their street.

The couple, married 26 years, moved from Florida in 2012 to renovate the inn.

With visions of the “The Bob Newhart Show” in her mind, “we told everybody, we’re living the dream,” Susan Stocks said.

Her brother, a pharmacist in Vero Beach, Fla., owns a fourth of the Tudor Inn; her cousin LuAnn Bilby, who also moved to Gatlinburg, owns another fourth. The Stockses each own one-fourth.

It took a year of renovations before the Inn was fit to welcome guests, Susan Stocks said, another five to build the reputation that brought regular business and repeat customers.

“It’ll take five years, again,” she said. “It’s one thing to buy a beat-up, run-down building and fix it up in a thriving town, but now to try to redo it in a town that’s going to struggle for years to come — you’re just not going to have that income and the amount of people. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be very hard.”

She doesn’t think the town’s tourist traffic will bounce back by summer, as some are openly hoping.

 “It’s one thing to buy a beat-up, run-down building and fix it up in a thriving town, but now to try to redo it in a town that’s going to struggle for years to come -- you’re just not going to have that income and the amount of people. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be very hard.”

-- Susan Stocks

Too, the Stockses are haunted by whispers of wrongdoing circulating in the small town, people still asking why city leaders waited to evacuate residents, whether tourist attractions were given precedence over people’s homes — or their lives.

“People say, ‘I’m sorry for your loss, but if you knew this, it would make your head spin,’” Susan Stocks said. “You don’t know what to believe.”

“People say, ‘I’m sorry for your loss, but if you knew this, it would make your head spin.' You don’t know what to believe.” 

-- Susan Stocks

At 58, Susan Stocks said as much as she loved Gatlinburg, she's not sure rebuilding a business will offer the financial stability the couple needs for retirement — stability they were hoping to gain by keeping their already-successful business open long-term. An insulin-dependent diabetic whose medication and supplies are expensive even with insurance, she worries about getting an individual policy if the Affordable Care Act is repeated and insurers can again deny coverage of pre-existing conditions.

“I think I need to look for a job with medical coverage,” she said.

She was hoping a previous job with the federal government might open some doors. Lately, she’s spent some nights looking over maps of the Washington, D.C., area, Virginia and Maryland.

Meanwhile, the Stockses continue to wait for a contractor to finish fire-related repairs to the roof of their primary residence, an apartment building they co-own with Bilby. From the parking lot, it’s a mile and a half to the stone stairs, but an eternity to what they represented.

“We just put our whole lives into it, and everything’s erased, in one night,” Susan Stocks said. “The legacy is gone. We have nothing to say what we’ve done here for five years — just a memory.”

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