The City of North Myrtle Beach is making an effort to show it learned something from last year's wildfire that destroyed 70 homes. Wednesday, 12 North Myrtle Beach firefighters were trained and certified in wildland firefighting.
North Myrtle Beach firefighter Mike Davis worked in forestry for 8 years in California and knows well the intensity of battling a wildfire. "You're sleeping out there, you're getting up the next morning, doing it again, you're not getting into bed, you're not getting a shower and that could go on for 2,3 days," said Capt. Davis.
Though that scenario is more likely to happen out west, North Myrtle Beach wants its firefighters to get the same sort of basic wildland fire training that's taught nationwide.
So state forestry officials are teaching them how to build a fire break, a trench that's used to contain a wildfire. "You really have to take away all the vegetation, all the dead stuff and move it down to bare soil," said Darryl Jones, SC Forestry Protection Chief.
Jones says the tactics firefighters are learning here probably would not have helped stop the spread of last year's devastating wildfire in Barefoot Resort. "Because it wouldn't be safe to use people on the ground to do that, but it would help in the mop-up situation."
North Myrtle Beach fire officials believe, this training is part of their lessons learned from last year's wildfire. And will help them be better prepared for the next one. "If it's a small creeping fire in the woods, coming up near a house, yeah, we can come in and cut lines around the house and know more effectively and yeah, it'll make a difference," Davis said.
This was just the first group to go through the training. The goal is to have 50 professional North Myrtle Beach Firefighters complete the course and be certified as wildland firefighters.
This was the second part of the training. Firefighters have already completed the online portion of their training.
