Always amazed at how these things get started in such populated areas as opposed to the open plains or the Mountains out west. Cigarettes or kids playing with matches, lightning, or arson. Anyway it's happening way too often in my opinion. One would think that people would have learned by now that dry tender, fire, and high winds don't mix very well.
SC wildfire burns homes near popular beach area
NORTH MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. – A coastal wildfire spread early Thursday toward one of the busiest tourist stretches in South Carolina, burning dozens of homes and forcing hundreds to flee in the middle of the night. No injuries were reported.
Police banged on doors to awaken residents as strong winds pushed the blaze through a wooded swath toward the Barefoot Landing development, a sprawling complex of houses, condominiums and golf courses separated from the main route through Myrtle Beach by the Intracoastal Waterway.
"It was like something out of a movie," said Danielle Prater, 25, of Charlotte, N.C., who woke her aunt and uncle at 1:30 a.m. after seeing flames several feet high racing through a neighbor's back yard. "I ran and got them and we got out of there as fast as we could."
Officials hoped the waterway would act as a natural firebreak to protect more populated areas closer to the beach. State fire officials said as many as 40 homes had been damaged or destroyed. North Myrtle Beach spokeswoman Nicole Aiello said only that 40 homes were damaged and the extent of that would not be known until later in the day.
A cause of the fire, which started a day earlier in a wooded area west of the beach, had not been determined. Officials said more than 8,000 acres had been scorched by early Thursday morning, with the flames jumping highways and sending walls of smoke over tourist attractions as 30 mph gusts pushed it toward the ocean. Winds were expected to be weaker Thursday.
Yet to identify a cause: Where have I seen this movie before?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090423/ap_ ... c_wildfire
Cole
