Historic Disasters Of East Tennessee

For more than 150 years, East Tennesseans have experienced disasters of historic proportions. The 1902 Fraterville Mine explosion took the lives of 216 men and boys. A 1904 head-on passenger train wreck in New Market claimed the lives of 64. In 1906, Jellico was practically destroyed by the explosion of a train car loaded with dynamite. Floodwaters near Rockwood in 1929 took the lives of 7 Boy Scouts and their Scoutmaster. An explosion in 1960 at Kingsport's Eastman plant killed 16 workers and injured 400. In 2016, a fire in the Great Smoky Mountains claimed the lives of 14 while destroying 2,460 buildings. Knoxville author Dewaine Speaks chronicles these and other historic tragedies in East Tennessee.

East Tennessee is gorgeous country, but the hills and hollers have a dark side. James Earl Ray, who had already assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., created mayhem at Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary when he led six other men in a short-lived escape. Several thousand Cherokee Indians from East Tennessee were forced on what would later be called the "Trail of Tears." In the "Hankins Murder" case and in the triple killings in Oliver Springs, chaos and confusion resulted from the wrongful arrest and public accusations of innocent people. Jake and C.H. Butcher brought about bedlam with their banking scandal that at the time was unsurpassed in scope in the nation's history. Author Dewaine A. Speaks details these stories and more.

A one-of-a-kind reference book, Tennessee Tragedies examines a wide variety of disasters that have occurred in the Volunteer State over the past several centuries. Intended for both general readers and emergency management professionals, it covers natural disasters such as floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes; technological events such as explosions, transportation wrecks, and structure fires; and societal incidents including labor strikes, political violence, lynchings, and other hate crimes. At the center of the book are descriptive accounts of 150 of the state’s most severe events. These range from smallpox epidemics in the eighteenth century to the epic floods of 1936–37, from the Sultana riverboat disaster of 1865 (the worst inland marine accident in U.S. history) to the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Included as well are stories of plane crashes, train wrecks, droughts, economic panics, and race riots. An extensive chronology provides further details on more than 900 incidents, the most complete listing ever compiled for a single state. The book’s introduction examines topics that include our fascination with such tragedies; major causes of death, injury, and destruction; and the daunting problems of producing accurate accountings of a disaster’s effects, whether in numbers of dead and injured or of economic impact. Among the other features are a comprehensive glossary that defines various technical terms and concepts and tables illustrating earthquake, drought, disease, and tornado intensity scales. A work of great historical interest that brings together for the first time an impressive array of information,Tennessee Tragedies will prove exceptionally useful for those who must respond to inevitable future disasters.

"This scholarly edition of Anne Armstrong's autobiography, Of Time and Knoxville, published here for the first time, provides a snapshot of Knoxville in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the city was becoming a modern, industrialized urban center. Armstrong moved to Knoxville as a teenager in 1885 and spent her early formative years there. Her memoir discusses the University of Tennessee, a growing west Knoxville (Cumberland Avenue and Kingston Pike, in particular), and other notable areas in what we now know as the university and downtown districts. Armstrong is also author of This Day and Time, an Appalachian novel credited as the first fictional account to depict the region realistically. Linda Behrend has written a critical introduction and meticulously annotated Armstrong's work"--

Protecting Historic Architecture and Museum Collections from Natural Disasters serves as a useful guide for professionals engaged in the preservation of cultural heritage, whether structures or artifacts. This book discusses how to prevent losses to the cultural heritage of structures and artifacts through more knowledgeable protection, prevention, and emergency response. Organized into six sections encompassing 26 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the mechanisms for preserving and protecting the heritage. This text then examines the threats of destruction by the natural elements such as decay, air pollution, subsidence, and other forms of attrition. Other chapters consider the social functional and economic values of the buildings and museum objects. This book discusses as well the natural disaster policies within a society. The final chapter deals with the enlistment of the private sector in dealing with catastrophes rising out of fire, earthquake, flood, and other natural disasters. This book is a valuable resource for conservation specialists, archivists, private collectors, dealers, curators, and librarians.