Wildfires have impacted more than 1,600 acres in the Myrtle Beach area, with flames burning within a few feet of homes in communities close to Carolina Forest.
With firefighters and first responders attending to the wildfires, a fire unrelated to the Carolina Forest blaze destroyed just one residence in Little River Horry County Fire Rescue announced on its Facebook page.
The question becomes what role fire prevention built into homes plays in ensuring wildfires haven't engulfed properties, considering some of their proximity to populated communities in Carolina Forest.
According to one home builder, it is negligible compared to the work of first responders who contained the flames over the last several days.
Jason Repak is the president of the Myrtle Beach-based custom home building firm Hudson Custom Homebuilders, Inc. In an interview with The Sun News, Repak said that most fire-deterrent technology in a home prevents the spread of fires started in the house versus from external sources like wildfires.
Things like firewalls between townhomes or using different types of drywall in different parts of homes slow fires from spreading, Repak said. Repak added that other fire prevention technologies in dwellings keep homes from collapsing on their occupants before they can escape.
"The thing that kept those homes from catching on fire and burning are the firefighters. There's just no, there's just no two ways about it," Repak added. "Yes, there are materials that we use and technologies that we put in place building homes to help prevent fire spread in homes. But I can't specifically point to one piece that if we didn't change that piece of technology, those homes would have burned up."
Yet homes built in South Carolina are already built to withstand extreme events like hurricanes. In 2024, the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety published a report rating the 18 states along the hurricane coast from Texas to Maine with the best building code systems.
Of the 18 states featured in the ranking, South Carolina tied for the third-best building code system. Meanwhile, Horry County's Code of Ordinances for buildings and building regulations follows the International Fire Code created by the International Code Council.
Repak said the Myrtle Beach area also provides a wide range of weather events that require building sturdier homes to survive extreme weather events. Whether it's making homes earthquake-proof, roofs resistant to high winds, or abodes able to cope with the occasional tropical storm or hurricane, Repak said that builders must account for all of that in Horry County.
"We live in a very unique place when it comes to constructing houses," He added. "So we have to deal with almost every type of weather phenomenon in this area that you can build a home for."
Part of the benefit comes from the large number of new homes throughout the Grand Strand and Carolina Forest.
The Carolina Forest communities are relatively new along the Grand Strand. Hence its name, Carolina Forest, retained its lush greenery and remained mostly undeveloped until the early 2000s.
Its remoteness and vast wilderness made it an attractive occasional practice range for the Conway Bombing and Gunnery Range between 1942 and 1947, and unexploded ordnance occasionally appeared in the Carolina Forest area in recent years.
The Myrtle Beach area and South Carolina have an ample supply of homes built within the last two to three decades. According to a report by the National Association of Home Builders, in 2023, the median age of a house owned in the United States was 40 years old.
According to the NAHB, the median age of South Carolina's housing stock was between 23-30 years old, and the real estate data firm ATTOM lists the average age of homes in Horry County as 30 years.
Repak added that newer homes also benefit from utilizing better fire-prevention technology that older homes could not access during the building process.
"Technology progresses, and material manufacturing progresses. We continue to find materials that create a little bit safer structure for homeowners," Repak said. "Remember, it was 50 years ago. We were putting asbestos in homes and lead-based paint 10 years before that."
However, Repak said this new technology can only account for a small portion of preventing homes from catching on fire, such as slowing the spread of a fire from one home to the next. He added that the work of firefighters and a touch of luck were responsible for preventing the mass destruction of fire due to flames in Carolina Forest.
"That was the effort of those firefighters and emergency responders on scene that got those fires knocked down before they spread to those homes because they could have easily spread those homes," Repak said. "Especially like the homes that you see down on in Cherry Grove, Atlantic Beach, North Myrtle Beach, all those oceanfront row homes that are close together, once a home catches on fire, it's very easy for that fire to jump from one home to the next."