One home destroyed, three damaged in Horry County fire

One house was destroyed and three others damaged in a fire Wednesday in the Brighton Woods at Victoria Station neighborhood off S.C. 707 in Horry County.

Battalion Chief Thomas Loeper with Horry Country Fire Rescue said the fire started in the back of the house.

He said crews were dispatched at 11:23 a.m., and the house on Menlo Lane was 75 percent burned when crews arrived at 11:29 a.m.

Loeper said none of the three occupants, a mother and her two children, were in the house during the fire, and no injuries were reported.

“This is a good example of how quickly a fire can progress,” said Loeper, although he didn’t know how long the house had been on fire by the time they arrived.

John White, who lives next to the house where the fire started, said a neighbor across the street knocked on his door and told him that the house adjacent to his was on fire.

“I walked out the back door, and the smoke hit me,” he said. “I saw what was going on, went around the side of my house and got a couple of hoses together, came out and started hosing down my property. But especially trying to hose down the bushes in between the property to keep the fire from coming over.”

He said the smoke was so thick that he couldn’t see across the pond behind his house, which suffered damage when the vinyl siding melted.

“I had to put my T-shirt over my face so I could breath because the smoke was so thick,” he said. “I had to hose myself down every minute because the heat was so intense, but I wasn’t about to lose my house.”

White said he used to talk to the occupants of the house, and he’s glad that nobody was hurt.

“There’s a mom, two young children, two dogs and everybody got out of the house,” he said. “That’s what I’m most grateful for.”

The house was owned by GRITS Rental Co., and property manager Heather Sabin said that they would work on finding a new place for the woman and her children, who had moved in during the spring.

Loeper said the occupants of the house had been referred to the Red Cross and that the cause of the fire was still under investigation.

This story was originally published June 22, 2016 at 3:08 PM with the headline "One home destroyed, three damaged in Horry County fire."