Gatlinburg Wildfires: At least three people are dead, more than 100 homes and businesses have been destroyed and thousands of residents have been evacuated as wildfires burn in and around Gatlinburg, TN. Country Aircheck caught up with WCYQ/Knoxville's Kevin King and WIVK/Knoxville's Nikki Thomas for a report on the damage and how their stations are respondng.

"This thing happened so quickly," King says, noting small fires have been an issue in the region for the last two weeks. "Gatlinburg is about a 45-minute drive from our offices and we've had air quality alerts for a few days, with officials advising people to avoid heavy activity outside. And you can't miss it; you can smell the smoke everywhere."

The situation deteriorated last night. "That's when they started evacuating Gatlinburg and when the team here got together and put a priority on dissemination of information and addressing immediate needs," King says. "Luckily we had big-time rain last night and that was a saving grace. Without it this would have been catastrophic. Fires are still burning, but it could have been worse. And there's more expected tonight."

As for WCYQ's response, "We initially set up for people to drop off supplies here, but we quickly filled up all of our station vehicles and a couple of trucks we called in," King continues. "We've since moved to the expo center downtown. There's some serious heavy lifting going on down there because so many have pitched in to help. That need will change in the coming days and we're prepared."

Staff at WIVK were caught off guard, too. "No one had any idea how big this was going to get and how fast," Thomas says. "We overrode our syndicated programming last night and went live putting people on the air and trying to get their needs addressed. There were people who'd evacuated and didn't know if their homes had been affected, others who knew they'd lost everything and were just crying with us, and others who were calling from out of state trying to find out how bad it was beacuse at that point the national media hadn't picked up the story yet."

"Information is still our focus and there is more planned," Thomas continues. "We're here to help. Not many of us have slept and I'm so proud of my people here. Nobody asked questions last night, they just came in and we got busy."