Wildfires Hit Myrtle Beach Area.Wildfires swept through a coastal region of South Carolina on Thursday and headed for North Myrtle Beach, destroying more than 40 homes and forcing more than 2,500 people to evacuate, state officials said.
Gov. Mark Sanford declared a state of emergency in Horry County, which includes the Myrtle Beach area, and officials of North Myrtle Beach were scrambling to get residents to pack up and flee.
No injuries have been reported since the fire began on Wednesday, but the blaze jumped a state highway and rapidly headed toward a heavily concentrated residential and tourist area, prompting the mass evacuations and the closing of schools and businesses in North Myrtle Beach.
The blaze began along the coast just west of Myrtle Beach around noon on Wednesday and quickly spread, fueled by 25 mile-an-hour winds and extremely low humidity.
“Our public safety department went door to door and we asked everyone to leave,” Mayor Marilyn Hatley of North Myrtle Beach said at a news conference Thursday. “We tried our best to remove everyone as soon as possible.”
Although the blaze has moved quickly along the coast, it stopped just sort of the Intracoastal Waterway separating the mainland from the coastal area, which firefighters were hoping would act as a natural barrier.
“We realized right away that it had huge potential, that it was a very dangerous fire,” said Russell Hubright, a spokesman for the South Carolina Forestry Commission. “The other serious part is that there’s quite a lot of homes in that immediate area there.”
Todd Cartner, a spokesman for the Horry County Fire Rescue, told The Associated Press that the blaze was the worst to hit the area since 1976, when about 30,000 acres, or 47 square miles, burned.
Typically, wildfires claim about 35 homes a year in South Carolina, Mr. Hubright said, adding that the wildfire that began on Wednesday claimed at least 40 homes and damaged another 100 in barely 24 hours.
“This is the worst fire on record as far as loss of homes,” he added.
Mr. Hubright said that fire and forestry officials responded quickly the blaze, and contained about 25 percent of it by late Wednesday, but that the fire burned vigorously overnight, and by Thursday morning containment was below 10 percent.
By early Thursday, officials said that the blaze had engulfed about 15,000 acres.
Many tourists who had been vacationing in the area --known for its golf courses and beaches and which generates about $16 billion a year in business -- were forced to flee. Officials were directing evacuees, including tourists and local residents, to three nearby shelters.
In the meantime, firefighters tried to fence in the flames with tractor plows and a helicopter equipped with a 750-gallon water bucket. But dry and gusty weather conditions that were expected to continue through Thursday were threatening to stoke the flames. Firefighters said they were concerned that the low humidity and strong winds would allow the fire to “spot,” or send out embers as far as a quarter mile away, causing the blaze to spread more quickly.
“When you’re out there trying to contain a fire and you’ve got fire jumping ahead of you, that makes it even more dangerous,” Mr. Hubright said.
Original Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/us/24blaze.html?hp
