Fire gutted a historic South Knoxville church Wednesday evening at about 8 p.m. The two-alarm fire brought 12 fire engines from the Knoxville Fire Department. According to Rita Bell, a member of the church, the members of New Prospect Presbyterian Church were having choir practice when they smelled something strange. Bell said, “We wondered aloud what the smell could be, feeling that something was wrong.” “We figured that maybe it had something to do with the fact that someone had been working on a part of our organ up in the attic earlier in the day,” she added. New Prospect Presbyterian Church is located at 6200 Sevierville Pike in South Knoxville.
“One of the men in the choir said that he thought the problem was a light fixture, because it was smoking, then we looked up at the light fixture and could see the flames from the attic and we knew we had a fire,” Bell said. “We went in and told Pastor Don Grady that there was a fire and that he needed to get out of the building, and before we even got out of the building we heard it crackling,” she added.
Kenneth Brown, a member of the church since 1951, said that this is the second fire the church has experienced. According to Brown, the first church, a wooden structure built in 1834, burnt down in 1923, thereafter replaced with a brick structure in 1925.
Bell said that the building housed many antiques. “We never got rid of anything,” Bell said. “We kept pews and even had little nursery chairs for the children that were one hundred years old.” She was especially distressed about a library collection from a former pastor, Rev. Winton Enloe. “We had all his papers that he wrote and everything,” she said sadly. Rev. Enloe had left the church to become a missionary to Japan.
Brown said, “I don’t see how we can replace it. There are only 35 of us members left. As the older people die, we have no one to replace them.”
Rev. Grady from Sevierville is the Interim Pastor at the church. He could not be reached at the time of printing to offer any comments on the fire.
Charles R. Barker, Public Information Officer for the City of Knoxville Fire Department, said that they estimated that the fire was burning up in the attic for a long time before being discovered, therefore making it much more difficult to extinguish. Barker added that it was difficult to get the cap off some of the fire hydrants that would enable them to use a large diameter hose and give them the needed water pressure to fight the fire. He noted that this was extremely frustrating to the firefighters. Barker said that the firefighters will return and investigate the problem with the hydrants in the near future.
According to Barker, the department believes the fire to be an accident, but they will conduct routine investigations as to the cause of the fire as a precaution.
The Knoxville Fire Department had a “Rehab Bus” on the premises where, according to Barker, the firefighters go to get warm, get something to drink, and refresh. “They must be ordered to go there for their own safety and the safety of others,” he added. “Their heart is in their work, so it is hard sometimes for them to leave the scene for a break.”

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