Myrtle Beach to offer free beach wheelchairs again through nonprofit partnership
The nonprofit Adaptive Surf Project and the City of Myrtle Beach are working to provide free beach wheelchairs to beachgoers with disabilities, after the city quietly ended the service during the pandemic.
Standard wheelchairs sink in the soft sand, so specialty beach wheelchairs allow wheelchair users to traverse over 100 feet from a beach access to the waterline.
Brock Johnson with Adaptive Surf Project said the North Myrtle Beach nonprofit plans on buying and maintaining five beach wheelchairs to be kept on Myrtle Beach-maintained beaches. The beach wheelchairs would be stored in locked boxes, provided by the city.
The five custom-built beach wheelchairs will cost $5,000. Johnson said individuals and businesses have already sent money to the Adaptive Surf Project specifically for beach wheelchairs in Myrtle Beach.
“Oh man, that is good news,” said Unita Knight of Carolina Forest. Knight purchased a $994 beach wheelchair so she and her 90-year-old mother could watch the waves.
“I’ll be one of the first ones to be down there trying to use it,” she said.
The city owned about half a dozen beach wheelchairs when the program was running. City spokesperson Mark Kruea remembered, “I did see chairs on a trailer” sometime ago, but said he was unsure where they were now.
The plan, which is still in the early stages, was made in a Tuesday meeting with Myrtle Beach city manager Jonathan “Fox” Simons, Jr.
“We’ve still got a lot more conversations to have to get this thing over the finish line, but it was a good first meeting,” Simons said.
The collaboration comes after the Sun News reported on May 1 that the City of Myrtle Beach discontinued their free beach wheelchair service during the pandemic to save money. This is the second time since 2016 that the city has ended and then reinstated this program.
