Fire danger heats up as temperatures plummet in Myrtle Beach area

Officials are concerned about a potential outbreak of fires this week with windy, dry and bitterly cold conditions forecast over the next two days for Horry and Georgetown counties.

With temperatures expected to dip below 20 degrees Tuesday night, the threat of house fires will increase as more residents turn on the heat – and space heaters in some cases – and keep it on for extended periods of time.

The threat of brush fires and wildfires also will significantly increase because of the lack of significant rainfall during the last several weeks combined with already dry fuels on the ground.

No burning bans or red flag alerts have been issued in the state as of Monday afternoon.

“We traditionally expect it to pick up at this time of year because the vegetation is doormat,” said Scott Hawkins, spokesman for the S.C. Forestry Commission. “And as we approach the normal fire season in the Southeast, we’re going into a La Nina pattern and federal officials are expecting aggressive fire behavior.”

The state’s wildfire season begins in January and continues through April.

A smoke detector is being credited with possibly saving the life of a Conway woman Monday morning.

Shawn Roberts said his mother was suffering from minor smoke inhalation and taken to Conway Hospital minutes after a fire at a home they share with his wife and 20-month-old daughter on 3307 Rainer Street.

“The smoke detector got her up,” Roberts said.

The woman was able to call 911 as she left the house and was taken to Conway Hospital for smoke inhalation. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but was centered in the kitchen.

Local and state officials are stressing caution when burning outdoors. The relative humidity is expected to be near 25 percent on Tuesday while winds are expected to be sustained at 20 miles per hour with gusts reaching 25 to 30 miles per hour today, said Tim Armstrong with the National Weather Service in Wilmington, N.C.

"There are a lot of dry fuels out there and that’s a concern,” Armstrong said.

Officials are also asking homeowners use caution when using portable heaters, a common cause of fires during the winter months.

“The issue we have this time of year is portable heaters,” said Battalion Chief Bruce Arnel of Myrtle Beach Fire Rescue. “As far as fires outside of that, we don’t see much of an increase in them. We don’t put extra staff on for the weather. The staff that we have is capable of handling these situations.”

Arnel also said that the city does not see an increase of fires started by the homeless community.

Street Reach Ministries in Myrtle Beach, for instance, is already expecting to be at its capacity of 65 on Tuesday night, said Julia Castillo, assistant director.

“We will fill up every bunk and every mat,” Castillo said. “We’ll fill up every little spot we can find. We have extra blankets and sleeping bags to hand out to anyone needing something to stay warm.”

Castillo said the city has had past blazes caused by the homeless who started a fire to keep warm in warehouse-type buildings.

“We’ve had those kinds of disasters,” she said, “but we want to keep as many off the streets, who want to be off the streets, as possible.”

An out-of-control debris burn is being blamed for a brush fire Sunday afternoon that burned about 21/2 acres of land near Blake Road and S.C. 544, just north of the S.C. 31 interchange. Firefighters from Horry County Fire Rescue, with aid from the Murrells Inlet Garden City Fire Department, were able to contain the blaze.

Forestry officials were also called to the scene and dug a fire line as a precaution, Hawkins said.

“They all begin as small fires,” said Hawkins, who expects the person who started the fire to be ticketed.

Lack of rainfall in 2011 has made the area ripe for wildfires.

In 2011, the National Weather Service recorded 32.93 inches of rainfall at the North Myrtle Beach station, making it the driest year since records started being kept in 2001, Armstrong said. The total was 19 inches below normal.

In December, the area received 0.48 inches of rainfall, well below the 3.5 expected annually. The last significant rainfall to the area was 1.13 inches on Nov. 3.

There is only a 20 percent chance of rain Saturday night and Sunday in the seven-day forecast. The area averages 3.69 inches of rain in January, Armstrong said.

“Until this La Nina pattern breaks or summer thunderstorm season rolls in, we’ll continue to be dry,” Armstrong said.

All of the state’s 46 counties have been in a moderate drought since July and those conditions won’t improve much through the winter months, according to officials. .