04-04-2025
North Myrtle Beach firefighters talk about ‘cool' experience fighting Upstate wildfire
NORTH MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WBTW) — Four North Myrtle Beach firefighters who recently returned home after helping fight the Table Rock fire in South Carolina's Upstate spoke with News13 about their experience.
North Myrtle Beach Fire Rescue deployed three crews between March 26 and Tuesday, with each crew spending two days in Pickens County. The firemen said they felt fortunate to help a different part of the state and make an impact.
'Not everyone gets to experience that in their career,' Chris McCarty said. 'So, it's cool.'
Lt. Ryan Marrs said while the South Carolina Forestry Commission was working to fight the fire, North Myrtle Beach crews helped make sure it didn't reach residents and their homes.
Marrs said the area was very rural, with houses far away from each other on dead-end roads along ridge lines. The firemen agreed working on that landscape was the hardest part of the job.
'They were very tight, dirt roads that you can't get a fire engine up,' McCarty said. 'So, you have to use smaller brush trucks, and ATVs, and foot crews.'
Many people needed to evacuated their homes, and Marrs said one woman who left was 'frazzled' while trying to also protect her pets in the process.
Just like Horry County when the Covington Drive fire in Carolina Forest initially broke out, Lt. Josh Beck says the Pickens County community came together to take care of first responders.
'The volunteers that were providing the food and snacks and everything like that, the ones that were manning the staging area, they were excellent,' Beck said. 'They couldn't have been nicer.'
The firefighters' deployments were made possible by the 'South Carolina Firefighter Mobilization' plan. Whenever a fire department needs help, other departments across the state share their crews and resources.
'The brotherhood is alive and well for all of South Carolina,' Beck said. 'That's one of the great things about working in the state, is you can go anywhere and you're going to be amongst friends.'
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Skylar Musick is a multimedia journalist at News13. Skylar is originally from Long Island, New York. She joined the News13 team in June 2024 after graduating from Villanova University in May 2024. Follow Skylar on X, formerly Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, and read more of her work here.
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