Bike week traffic affects emergency responders

There are several fire stations and emergency responders having to re-route their paths because of the congested roads during the spring bike week festival.

Just a few feet away from a lot of the action of Bike Week in Murrells Inlet is the Fire and Rescue department. This week instead of just trying to respond to an emergency, the fire department also has to cope with major traffic congestion. This is when alternate strategies come into play.

Murrells Inlet Fire Rescue chief Norman Knight said, “Fortunately we have side streets that we can go down and be able to avoid that congestion if we need to. We just modify our response. We don’t send as many trucks to a call as we would normally and try to keep our trucks in different stations more then what we normally do sometimes.”

Once on the main road, their fire and rescue trucks are hit even harder with traffic. While the highway patrol helps spread the sea of cars and bikes, for the most part people move out of the way on their own.

“For me personally, I think people get out of the way, they’re respectful when we come through and we really don’t have a whole lot of problems,” said Knight.

And so far this week, there haven’t been too many emergencies to fight their way through traffic in.

“It started off pretty hectic and fortunately it’s calmed down some in the last several days. But of course we still got two days left of the rally,” said Knight.

The fire and rescue department said once the traffic decreases some, they’ll be able to concentrate more on the emergency, instead of trying to figure out how to get there.

The chief of the Murrells Inlet Fire Rescue said the packed roads during bike week are still not as bad as summer traffic.

Knight said responding to emergencies during those popular vacationing months can also be tricky. He said there’s about a ten-percent increase in responses this week compared with a normal week.