Watch as Murrells Inlet firemen rescue fisherman stuck in pluff mud. How they got him out
Getting stuck in the pluff mud is common. Calling the fire department to be rescued from it is not.
The Murrells Inlet-Garden City Fire Department pulled a fisherman stranded on a personal pontoon boat from the pluff mud Tuesday morning, said Ellen Sander, a tourist who watched the rescue mission.
Sander said she and her husband were walking their dogs when they noticed fire trucks around the Morse Park Landing. They stopped and saw the person stuck out in the mud.
“I was wondering why they don’t just walk in and then I was told about the pluff mud,” Sander said.
Pluff mud is a sticky and stinky mud made up of decaying plant and animal matter found in South Carolina salt marshes, The Sun News reported. It can be deceivingly deep and hard to get out of once stuck.
The Murrells Inlet-Fire Department almost got trapped while trying to save the unidentified fisherman, Sander said. Firefighters then put down ladders to walk on along the side of the pluff mud. When they got close to the fisherman, firefighters were able to throw a rope out, which they used to pull the man out.
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While it’s normal for boaters to get stuck in the mud, it’s very rare for fire departments to rescue people from pluff mud in the Myrtle Beach area. Over text, Horry County Fire Rescue spokesman Tony Casey told The Sun News he has not heard about the department pulling someone out of the mud in the past six years. Via email, Monty Reed, the North Myrtle Beach beach supervisor, said he can only remember one or two incidents from the last several years where the city was called.
It’s easier — and less embarrassing — for boaters to wait for the tide to rise again than be pulled out by the fire department.
Sander and another bystander Louisa Watrous applauded the fire department on their ingenuity for getting the boat back to shore.
