NORMAN PARK, Ga. — Jeremy Henry sees the hand of God in local efforts to help East Tennessee fire victims.

Henry, assistant fire chief of the Norman Park Volunteer Fire Department, was one of three VFD volunteers to deliver donations last week to Gatlinburg, Tenn., where many homes were destroyed by wildfires that started in late November.

He and Chief Timmy Hunter and Capt. Arron Norman, all from the Norman Park VFD, delivered a little over 100 small Christmas trees, decorations and about 50 stockings of gifts for children up to Gatlinburg on Friday. They also delivered about $1,200 in monetary donations. The community had been giving donations for almost two weeks prior to that.

Henry said Gatlinburg officials believed they had enough toys for children affected by the fires, but they needed small Christmas trees and decorations for the people who were evacuated to put in their motel rooms or disaster shelters. As the VFD and the Norman Park Police Department sought donations, they focused on those items, but donors often gave gift items for kids as well.

“Everything we carried was probably distributed by Friday night,” Henry said, indicating how great the need was for some holiday cheer.

About an hour after the drop-off, Henry received a call from the Gatlinburg Fire Department. They’d just discovered a group of children who weren’t going to have any gifts for Christmas — except that the firefighters were able to give them some of the stockings the Norman Park men had just delivered.

“It was very much well-received,” Henry said. “People in this area wouldn’t conceive the devastation without seeing it first-hand.”

He said before the fire reached Gatlinburg, fire officials had issued three “all-calls” where all surrounding fire departments — three paid municipal departments and an unknown number of county volunteer groups — were all summoned by the U.S. Forest Service to fight wildfires on the mountain. That afternoon, the fire reached Gatlinburg itself, and the exhausted firefighters had to deal with matters right at home.

“Preserving property had to take second place to going in and evacuating people and saving lives,” Henry said.