A little more than 33 years and one week ago, Horry County was plagued by a fire twice the size of the one that began Wednesday near Conway.
A fire that started April 10, 1976, raged and burned an area near U.S. 501 and S.C. 90 for more than a week and scorched more than 30,000 acres.
A report by Thom Anderson, who was state editor of the then-Florence Morning News, said the fire burned a large area with massive amounts of valuable timber that was then sparsely populated.
One mobile home and an isolated farm building were destroyed by the 1976 fire — a huge contrast to the more than 40 residences that were destroyed in less than a day.
“Horry County hadn’t grown like it had in the last 30 years,” Anderson said in a telephone interview Thursday. “The fire didn’t threaten as many people. It was mainly just woodlands that burned.”
Not much else sticks out in Anderson’s mind about the 1976 fire, but he said he remembers his newspaper almost lost a staff car during the fire.
And the young reporter in the car had to make a break for it if he didn’t want to become part of the story he was covering.
“The reporter had driven down some rickety road and looked up and saw the fire trying to trap him,” Anderson said. “He didn’t know if he was going to be trapped.”
The reporter managed to escape harm and save the car.
“He was a very relieved young fellow,” Anderson said.
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