Hundreds came out to support Georgetown County firefighter Annie Bowers and her family at Surfside’s Island Bar and Grill Thursday night.
The family lost everything in a fire on Feb. 1 of this year. Annie Bowers describes the night she woke to her home in flames last month as horrific.
“The only way to describe it was, looking through the gates of Hell,” said Mrs. Bowers.
They and their two teenage daughters survived the blaze. They lost six pets to the fire that night.
“Knowing through years of experience that we only had seconds to get the girls out of the house, we ran around the house, busted into windows, and got our children out of the house,” said Mrs. Bowers.
The community came together at the restaurant to raise money to help the family put the pieces back together.
“Had it not been for the emotional, the physical support that they have shown us, I don’t know where we would’ve been,” she said.
The event raised three hundred dollars alone in the first hour, with ten percent of all sales adding up to help out. Organizers and friends of the Bowers, Danielle Ullom and Steven Vankirk say the community’s help didn’t start there.
“Oh my gosh, it was amazing,” said Ullom. “Just, even just our local fire departments like Horry County Fire Rescue, Midway Fire Department, Murrells Inlet Garden City, just had showed up at our headquarter station in Georgetown County with a plethora of things.”
The Bowers are the community’s power couple. Annie is a Georgetown County firefighter and Marty is a medic.
“I dealt with it in Iraq, when I was over there, but over there, we kind of expected it, bad things to happen,” Mr. Bowers said. “But, in this situation, there was no warning, you don’t expect it.”
Mrs. Bowers says three things, aside from the community’s help, have gotten them through this tough time.
“Trust, a lot of love, and a lot of patience,” said Annie Bowers.
Annie and Marty Bowers say they still aren’t sure what caused the fire, but they say they lost 30 years of memories that were in their home.
Their GoFundMe page has raised more than two-thousand dollars.
