Sevier County expo celebrates Smokey Bear and 80 years of wildfire prevention

SEVIER COUNTY, Tenn. (WATE) — Sevier County celebrated Smokey Bear’s 80th birthday on Thursday with an expo event raising awareness for wildfire prevention.

On Thursday, the county held it’s third annual event with plenty of educational and fun activities for the family. In addition to water activities and a fire safety trailer, there was also the chance for everyone to get up close and personal with a Black Hawk helicopter with a “Bambi Bucket,” a fire truck, and a technology trailer teaching about the safeties in place for electrical infrastructure.

“It’s more important every year because as we know, Sevier County is growing every year in population. A lot of folks move here and a lot of people visit here. The more we interact and intermingle with this wildland urban interfaces, that’s the place where the woods and the civilization kind of come together and where we’re interacting, the more of the chance we have of those devastating fires,” said David Puckett, Sevier County Fire Administrator and Chief of Sevier County Fire and Rescue.

The U.S. Fire Administration explains that the wildland urban interface is “the line, area or zone where structures and other human development meet or intermingle with undeveloped wildland or vegetative fuels.”

An average of 3,000 structures were lost each year between 2002 and 2016 to wildland urban interface fires nationwide, according to the administration. Additionally, the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fire Administration, between 30 and 45 percent of homes in Tennessee are in the Wildland Urban Interface.

“It’s really every everybody’s part to take a little bit of way to try to prevent this, that’s the reasoning [why] you know, Smokey Bear says ‘only you can prevent forest fires,’ and that’s really true. And that’s the message that we’re trying to get out here, that it’s up to each one of us to take something back to reduce that,” Puckett added.

Sevier County’s celebration comes just a few days before Smokey’s true birthday on August 9, according to the USDA.

While many may know Smokey mostly by his cartoon form, Smokey Bear was also a real bear who was rescued as a cub during a wildfire in Captain Mountains of New Mexico in 1950.

According to the Associated Press, Smokey died at his National Zoo home in Washington DC in 1976 and was later returned to the mountains where he was found as a cub with burned paws.

The AP adds that the character of Smokey Bear was created in 1944, a few years before Smokey Bear was found as a cub, because of fears that enemy shelling from Japan during WWII would cause forest fires while most of U.S.’ firefighters were in battle overseas.

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