Death toll from Tennessee wildfires climbs to 10

The tally of documented property losses from the fires, which have reduced whole neighbourhoods to ruins in the resort town of Gatlinburg in eastern Tennessee, have been put at more than 700 structures destroyed, authorities said yesterday.

In a televised briefing for reporters yesterday, Sevier County Mayor Larry Waters said the number of people confirmed killed in the fires was now 10, up from seven deaths reported on Wednesday.

That marked the highest number of deaths in a single US wildfire since 19 firefighters perished near Prescott, Arizona, in 2013, and the largest civilian death toll since 15 people were killed in California's so-called Cedar Fire in 2003, according to Jessica Gardetto, a spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

None of the Tennessee victims has been publicly identified. A spokeswoman for the fire command center told Reuters that no firefighters had been reported killed there.

The latest fire disaster began last week when a blaze now dubbed the Chimney Tops 2 fire erupted in a remote area of rugged, hard-to-reach terrain in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Gatlinburg, authorities said.

Fed by drought-parched brush and trees and stoked by fierce winds, the flames spread quickly days later, exploding on Monday into an inferno that roared out of the park into surrounding homes and businesses.

"The wildfire was determined to be human-caused and is currently under investigation," according to a bulletin released on Thursday by fire commanders and the National Park Service. It gave no further details.

Steady rains on Tuesday night and into Wednesday helped firefighters slowed the blaze, but officials as of Thursday morning were still reporting zero containment around a fire zone that spanned more than 17,000 acres (6,880 hectares).