MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WBTW) – Multiple Myrtle Beach agencies responded to reports of people stuck in a storm drain Saturday night, but the incident ended up being more confusing than dangerous and left people with a lot of questions.
News13 worked Monday to figure out what exactly happened.
A man in the drain told crews there were others with him and stuck inside, but we found out no one was really stuck. The man was able to crawl out the same way he crawled in, which was through a drainage pipe off 3rd Avenue South.
According to Myrtle Beach Fire Rescue, at one point there were others with him, but the man had been drinking and lost track of them, and that is when he called for help. It turns out his friends were not even in the pipe or the area anymore when the man realized they were gone.
While fire rescue crews worked to search the drainage system, police were eventually able to locate the others and confirm they were okay.
This left people wondering why someone would be in a drainage pipe in the first place.
“We’re under the impression they were homeless, they were just trying to get out of the cold,” said Myrtle Beach Fire Lt. Jonathan Evans. “We do have a pretty large homeless population, and they’re going to do whatever they can during these cold days to make themselves warm.”
Myrtle Beach first responders rarely get calls of people trapped in confined spaces. “It’s one of those low frequency, high-risk calls,” Evans said.
So they take them very seriously, which was the case Saturday when multiple departments suited up to try to find the people reportedly stuck in the drain.
“We put up our confined space equipment,” Evans said. “We got public works involved as well, because it was in the storm drain, and there was lots of water. So they helped just drain some of that water out. They also had a camera they were able to look and see if somebody was in there without us putting a person in there.”
Genuine concern for his friends is why this would not be considered filing a false report.
“This would be somebody who legitimately thought something was wrong,” Evans explained. “And he called us. That’s what we come out and do.”
While the man was not charged with filing a false police report, he was arrested for public intoxication.
Evans said the weekend’s cold weather made search efforts more difficult, which is why crews were on-scene for a couple of hours before determining no one else was in the pipe.