Police cite driver after car hits gas line near The Market Common, causes huge fire

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WMBF) – The driver responsible for hitting a gas line and causing a massive fire on Sunday night received a citation, according to police.

Firefighters and police were called late Sunday night to Walton Drive off Farrow Parkway after a car hit the gas line.

Myrtle Beach police MCpl. Tom Vest explained that the driver crashed into the roundabout by not yielding on a left turn, and due to medical issues with their eyes, the driver continued and hit the gas line.

It sparked a huge fire at the Ortho SC building but firefighters had to deal with it in a different way than they typically do for most fires.

“In a normal fire, whatever is burning we want to put that out so it stops burning. But with gas operations, if you put the gas out, it’s still leaking because we can’t shut it off,” said Captain Jon Evans, with the Myrtle Beach Fire Department. “Now we have a gas leak and it creates a whole other issue where that could be going somewhere that could cause an explosion,” said Evans.

Evans hopes the city will place more protective equipment on the outside of buildings to prevent this from happening again.

“You have the pylons there so things like this don’t happen. I’m not sure if it’s required with something like this at a certain range, but obviously, this is something to look into in the future may be putting something there so that it doesn’t happen quite the same,” said Evans. “Because maybe if it had it would have bounced off and didn’t hit the gas line and we wouldn’t have had that issue.”

The driver was cited for failure to yield right-of-way on a left turn.

Beyond her traffic violation, Myrtle Beach Police say they don’t expect to issue any additional charges.

The woman was later treated for non-life threatening injuries and was released.

No other serious injuries were reported.

As for the status of the building, The owner of Ortho SC told WMBF News that it would be months before they are back up and running.

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