Wildfire Facts

Forest fires move faster uphill than downhill.

Dolly Parton grew up in Sevier County, Tennessee. In November 2016, wildfires there took 14 lives and destroyed or damaged over 2,400 homes and buildings. Within 48 hours, she launched the My People Fund: $1,000 a month for six months, then $5,000 on the last check. Nearly 900 families were paid, almost $9 million in all. She died on August 25, 2026, at 80. The mountains never forgot who took care of them.

Smokey Bear was a poster before he was a real bear. In 1950, firefighters in New Mexico found a three-month-old black bear cub clinging to a burned tree, his paws scorched from a wildfire. They nursed him back to health, named him Smokey, and sent him to the National Zoo in Washington DC. He lived there for 26 years. He got so much fan mail he was given his own ZIP code: 20252. He is buried in Capitan, New Mexico.