Brush fires continue to cause trouble locally while wildfires plague much of state
By Delayna Earley
The Island News
Several families were displaced from a Beaufort apartment complex on Thursday, Feb. 27, after what started as a brush fire.
The City of Beaufort/Town of Port Royal Fire Department got called to Garden Oaks Apartments just after 2 p.m. for a brush fire.
According to Beaufort/Port Royal Deputy Fire Chief Ross Vezin, the fire quickly spread to one of the buildings on the property and was upgraded to a structure fire after it spread to several AC units and the apartment building.
Beaufort/Port Royal Fire Department, Beaufort County EMS, the Red Cross, Beaufort Police Department and Dominion Energy all responded to the fire, which was extinguished in five minutes, according to Vezin.
Despite the quick response time in getting the fire under control, five families were displaced following the fire due to “Dominion securing the power to the building.”
While the origin of the fire is still under investigation, Vezin said that he is positive that the fire spread as quickly as it did due to the dry conditions that most of the state of South Carolina is experiencing currently.
S.C. Governor Henry McMaster declared a state of emergency Saturday, March 1, due to the wildfires that are burning across the state. This action by the governor’s office followed a statewide burn ban that was issued by the South Carolina Forestry Commission (SCFC) on Saturday.
An executive order put out by the governor states that the burn ban will remain in effect until further notice and prohibits all outdoor burning – to include yard debris, campfires and prescribed burning.
“This means you can and will go to jail for starting a fire outdoors in South Carolina. Period,” the executive order from the governor said.
Currently, most of the wildfires that are burning are located in Horry, Union, Pickens, Oconee and Spartanburg but factors such as lack of rain, low humidity across the state, strong winds mean that there are no areas that are exempt from the danger of a wildfire, according to the S.C. Forestry Commission.
Beaufort/Port Royal Fire Department sent one of their engines along with three firefighters to the PeeDee area to help with putting out and controlling the wildfires.
“It’s just so dry,” said Vezin. “They put out a fire and within five minutes it has popped back up again.”
Vezin said locally there have been a few calls about people burning since the burn ban was issued on Saturday.
“Mostly it is just people that didn’t know about the ban and once we told them they were very understanding,” said Vezin.
The Burton Fire District responded to two brush fires within two hours on Thursday, Feb. 27, that spread and damaged structures and threatened homes. Both were caused by “out-of-control yard debris fires” according to a media release.
The first happened just after 12:30 p.m. on Thursday afternoon. The Burton Fire District, MCAS Fire, the Emergency Services and Beaufort County EMS and the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office responded to the report of a yard debris fire that had spread to a shed that contained a motorcycle on Bruce K. Smalls Drive.
When firefighters arrived on the scene, they found the shed, which was located behind the main residence, fully engulfed in flames in addition to a brush fire that was very quickly spreading across the yard.
Firefighters extinguished the shed fire while working to contain and extinguish the brush fire, but while they were battling those fires, they noticed that they roof of a neighboring home was smoking as well.
Another crew responded to the neighboring home and extinguished a small fire on the roof of that home that had been caused by embers from the shed fire.
There were no injuries reported. The shed and its contents were destroyed and the neighboring home sustained only minor damages.
The fire started from a trash fire that had been extinguished but had reignited.
Then just after 2 p.m. on Thursday, Burton firefighters responded to a brush fire on Kato Lane that was rapidly spreading when they arrived on scene. It had already spread across two additional yards from where it originated and had threatened two homes.
That fire was quickly contained and there were no injuries reported. A neighboring home sustained minor damages to their porch.
This fire started because a resident was burning outdoor yard debris and threw some cardboard onto the fire. Embers from the cardboard were blown in the wind which caused the fire to spread.
So far this year, Burton Fire District has responded to 24 brush, trash or otherwise unsafe fires, some of which spread and damaged structures and property, according to a release.
Vezin said the biggest thing that people can do right now is just don’t burn anything outside at all and hope for rain.
“There will be plenty of time throughout the year to burn things,” Vezin said. “This is not the time.”
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
