Information from WYSH Radio
Anderson County investigators are looking into the cause of a fire that destroyed a home on Old Fraterville Hollow Road near Lake City Monday night.
The home’s owner, Kenneth Duncan, had been allowing his sons to stay at the home when the fire broke out Monday night. The two sons—Eddie and Anthony Duncan—along with a woman staying at the house with them had been visiting neighbors when one sibling saw an orange glow coming from the direction of the house.
Information from WYSH Radio
The Tennessee Department of Transportation will spend more than $1.2 million to make safety improvements on Highway 116, also known as New River Highway, in Anderson County’s Briceville community.
After a string of accidents, including some fatalities, on the rural road, local officials began trying to find ways to prevent them in the future and those efforts paid off last August when a team of TDOT officials joined Anderson County commissioners Tim Isbel and Zach Bates, members of the Briceville Volunteer Fire Department, and deputies from the Anderson County Sheriff’s Department on a tour of the 11-mile stretch of road from Frost Bottom to the Campbell County line.
Information from WYSH Radio
Rescue crews located three people reported missing after not returning from an ATV ride uninjured Saturday morning.
Crews from the Anderson and Morgan County rescue squads as well as crews from the Marlow and Briceville volunteer fire departments and others assisted in the search for a grandfather, father, and son who went riding Friday on Windrock Mountain, got lost, and had to camp out in the elements overnight. The trio was located Saturday morning and, aside from one mild case of hypothermia, was safe and sound.
A Briceville man who claimed to be experiencing withdrawal symptoms admitted strangling his pregnant wife during an argument on Tennessee Hollow Lane on Wednesday, allegedly making her unable to breathe at times and causing her to almost black out, authorities said.
The argument allegedly started at about 9:45 a.m. Wednesday when the woman “called in to work,” according to an affidavit filed in Anderson County General Sessions Court.
An intruder fled a Briceville home Wednesday after the resident, who had been asleep upstairs, woke up and called out, authorities said.
The resident had heard someone break into his home and walk up his stairs, Anderson County Sheriff Paul White said in a press release Thursday.
After the intruder fled, the resident and a neighbor saw a white Jeep leave the area. The neighbor followed the Jeep in her car but lost sight of it as it traveled toward Lake City, White said.
Lower humidity and gusty winds at higher elevations mean fire conditions have worsened in East Tennessee, state firefighters said Sunday.
Two firefighters were slightly injured battling blazes in Campbell County on Saturday, said Nathan M. Waters, Tennessee Forestry Division assistant district forester.
State and local firefighters have responded to 16 new fires since Thanksgiving Day across upper East Tennessee, including in Anderson, Campbell, Knox, Morgan, Scott, Sevier, and Union counties. The fires have burned hundreds of acres, and many of them are suspected arsons.
Waters said forestry crews would recheck fires in Anderson, Scott, and Campbell counties, including one on Walden Ridge that broke out again on Saturday and one on a mountaintop west of Briceville on Highway 116, also known as New River Highway. The Walden Ridge breakout was contained, and “crews will be improving lines today,” Waters said.
The large mountaintop fire near New River Highway west of Briceville was mostly out Saturday afternoon, but flames are flaring again on Walden Ridge in northern Anderson County, a state official said.
Meanwhile, firefighters were battling a 1,000-acre blaze in Campbell County. Despite fires across several counties in upper East Tennessee in the past week, though, no structures or homes have been damaged, according to the Tennessee Division of Forestry in Knoxville.
Assistant District Forester Nathan M. Waters said it wasn’t clear what caused the new fire at Walden Ridge. There were several possibilities. The fire had been considered mostly out on Friday, but it could have restarted, jumped control lines, or been reset. State officials suspect arson as the original cause of the 225-acre fire, which started Tuesday at Walden Ridge Road. That’s just north of Dutch Valley Road at Sulphur Springs Road.
Arson was also suspected at the fire near New River Highway at Graves Gap. It was first reported as a 100-acre blaze on Thursday but, fueled by winds, grew to 375 acres on Friday. It’s on a mountain east of New River Highway, also known as Highway 116, between Briceville and Rosedale.
State and local firefighters used “back fires” to control a mountaintop blaze near New River Highway on Friday. State officials suspect the fire, which grew to 375 acres, was started by arson.
GRAVES GAP—Driven by wind, a mountaintop fire that started as a 100-acre blaze in northern Anderson County on Thursday grew to 375 acres Friday, authorities said.
State firefighters suspect the fire at Graves Gap on New River Highway west of Briceville was started by arson, spokesman Nathan M. Waters said. Waters is assistant district forester for the Tennessee Division of Forestry in Knoxville.
Local and state firefighters battled the mountaintop blaze by setting up control lines, using hand tools and two bulldozers to clear away brush and set “back fires,” essentially fighting “fire with fire.”
Early Friday night, Waters said firefighters had left and plan to return to the blaze on Saturday. Firefighters from the Tennessee Division of Forestry have been assisted by volunteers from Marlow, Briceville, and Sevier County.
A Briceville man told Anderson County deputies that two men beat him up and stole his medications as he was walking home from Shop-Rite in Lake City on Tuesday afternoon.
A deputy had reported that the victim, who had bought a pack of cigarettes at Shop-Rite, was found lying next to Briceville Highway at Beech Grove Lane, an Anderson County Sheriff’s Department report said.
The 25-year-old victim said the two men pulled up behind him in a black truck, got out and beat him up, and took 60 oxycodone and 30 MS Contin pills, the report said. They also stole a pack of L&M cigarettes and $7 cash, the victim told Deputy Joshua I. Zisman.
The victim told Zisman he did not know the men and did not see them leave. He was taken by ambulance to Methodist Medical Center after the alleged robbery.
