Tree Trimming in Myrtle Beach

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WBTW) — Hundreds of passengers are stuck at Myrtle Beach International Airport after dozens of Spirit Airlines delays and cancellations.

According to the Myrtle Beach International Airport website, at least 11 Spirit Airlines flights have been canceled Tuesday, with many others listed as delayed. Other airlines are also showing some delays and cancellations.

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A News13 viewer said hundreds of people at the airport have been sleeping on the ground, and their luggage was taken but can’t be returned while they wait on their flights.

Many stuck passengers are feeling frustrated and said there is a lack of communication. As the hours roll by, and more flights are delayed or canceled, frustration keeps mounting.

“It’s just frustrating that they’re not being upfront and telling us what’s going on,” said Jolene Campbell, a passenger from Pennsylvania. “I don’t want to wait until 10:00 tonight again to find out that our flight’s been canceled and we’re stuck here another day. We have jobs and we have to get back to work.”

“I’m stuck here,” said Derrick Green, a passenger from New York. “I don’t know anybody in Myrtle Beach. I’ve never been here.”

Green has had seven of his flights canceled by Spirit Airlines this weekend. All he can do is shrug his shoulders.

“I don’t even know relatively to where I live where I am,” Green said, as he shrugged. “So I’m just stuck here. I’m at their mercy.”

Green was one of several Spirit Airlines passengers who were stranded at the airport overnight. He slept on a windowsill.

“I hate it. I mean I stick, I want to go home,” Green said. “I want to take a shower. I want to get in my bed.”

Rumors were circulating online claiming that Spirit Airlines employees were on a strike, but in a statement to News13, the airline said that is not true, and cited weather and operational challenges for the issues. The airline did not elaborate on what the operational challenges were.

“We’re working around the clock to get back on track in the wake of some travel disruptions over the weekend due to a series of weather and operational challenges,” the airline said in a statement. “We needed to make proactive cancellations to some flights across the network, but the majority of flights are still scheduled as planned. We understand how frustrating it is for our guests when plans change unexpectedly, and we’re working to find solutions. We ask guests to actively monitor their emails and flight status before heading to the airport. As a team, we strive every day to get our guests where they need to go on time. Our focus will continue to be on taking care of our guests.”

It’s led to delays and cancellations at many airports nationwide, leaving passengers waiting.

“One flight’s already been canceled today,” Campbell said. “The other one’s been delayed four times. Ours has already been delayed twice for 6 p.m. so we’re thinking it’s not looking good for today either.”

Other passengers, Cheryl Webb and her husband, were given refunds by Spirit Airlines for their canceled flight.

“And that was basically it,” said Webb, who is from Michigan. “I had to pay for another airline for flights going back home to Michigan. I had to pay of course for baggage. I had to pay for another day for a rental car as well as had to get a hotel.”

In a statement to News13, the airport said passengers are encouraged to check their flight status before heading to the airport and to contact their airline directly for any flight-related issues.

“We empathize with affected passengers and are committed to assisting Spirit as they work to resume normal operations at MYR,” the statement read.

Count on News13 for updates to this developing story.

Homeownership naturally has quite a few benefits and is something that everyone looks forward to. There are some negatives associated with it, however. You’ll have to continually put up with the likes of household pests, for example.

That doesn’t mean that this needs to be difficult. If you’ve found that you’re spotting pests more than you’d like, there are a few things you can do. With a little effort, you should be pest-free relatively quickly, all without hiring a professional.

How To Get Rid Of Household Pests

Getting a bug spray is easier said than done. After all, there are quite a few options to choose from. How do you pick the right one? If you’re comparing a cheap option to a biodegradable pantry moth spray that’s safe for food preparation areas, for example, the choice might be obvious.

Much of this revolves around exactly what you need to get rid of and where they are. In the kitchen, for instance, using something appropriate for areas close to food is vital. In other areas, it might not be as necessary but could still be recommended.

With pest and bug sprays, sometimes it’s worth going for the better-recommended option.

Bait is perhaps the most effective way of getting rid of ants. Thankfully, it also requires relatively little effort. Instead, you simply need to pick up the right bait and place that around your home. If the ants prefer specific places in your house, then that’s where you should focus on.

That bait will subsequently be brought back to the colony. After a few hours or days, depending on the bait, the colony should be eradicated. While this is going on, you shouldn’t have to worry about doing anything else, so it’s as low-effort as possible.

In some areas, raccoons can be a large nuisance, and some indoor pest control measures mightn’t work on them. You can still outsmart the raccoons in a few ways, however. Sometimes, this could be as simple as setting up motion-activated lights, which might scare them off at night.

You might also need to lock away your bins at night, preferably in a shed or somewhere similar. If that’s not an option, then securing the lids and making sure your bins can’t be tipped over would be a recommended step. That should prevent any mess the following morning because of the raccoons.

Wrapping Up

Regardless of where you live, you’ll have to put up with a few pests. They don’t have to affect your health, however. The exact type might change, but getting rid of them and keeping them away should remain the same.

Remembering to keep things as clean as possible will also stop many of them from turning up around the house.

Though that takes some effort, it’s much more attractive than needing to hire a pest control expert to take care of the problem. Who wants to wait until the problem becomes that big? Doing all of the above will make sure that household pests aren’t an issue.

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House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn called on the Biden administration Monday to extend the eviction moratorium and questioned why South Carolina has not distributed federal rental aid to those in need.

In a call with reporters, Clyburn said though the U.S. Supreme Court has indicated the administration could not extend an eviction moratorium, which expired on Saturday, put in because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the president should still go forward.

“I know what the Supreme Court has said, but my position is simply this: take the administrative action that needs to be taken,” Clyburn said. “I would much rather the next four or five years be spent with them stopping the Biden administration than for us to spend the next four or five years trying to litigate to get it done. Let them litigate to get it undone.”

On the call, Clyburn also expressed frustration that South Carolina has moved too slow doling out its share of $500 million in rental assistance, saying almost none has been distributed.

“It makes no sense to me that here in South Carolina we’re sitting on $500 million, and people are about to have their furniture put out on the streets,” Clyburn said. “People are going to have to start all over and they can go live in a shelter and then run the risk of getting COVID-19 and spreading it throughout the community. This is not a good look for any state, and really not a good look for my home state.”

South Carolina’s Housing Authority has said documentation requirements have led to delays, but the agency recently made changes to make it easier to apply for the assistance. The agency also has used multiple mediums to promote the assistance for people to apply, such as emails, texts, TV and radio advertising, social media, the Charleston Post and Courier reported.

The Housing Authority also has said if tenants are forced out of their rental units, the money can be used to cover emergency housing, such as staying at a hotel, moving costs or security deposits for a new apartment.

Facing pressure, the White House is pushing states and localities to take steps to stop evictions.

The White House Monday called on states and localities to extend or put in place evictions moratoriums for at the least the next two months and for local courts to pause eviction proceedings until tenants and landlords can first seek to access emergency rental assistance.

Last week, Gov. Henry McMaster told reporters an extension would not come in South Carolina.

“Those moratoriums have been in effect for many months now. We are looking for people to go to work, we have thousands of jobs and employers that have jobs for people. We have training (for) anyone who wants to take these jobs. It’s time for all of us to get back to work. That is the way to go forward for us to be working,” McMaster said. “At some point these emergency measures must end and they’ve ended in South Carolina.”

Reporter Rebecca Liebson contributed to this article.

Over the past 18 months, the rates of many respiratory illnesses plummeted as people stayed home or wore masks to avoid contracting COVID-19.

However, now that society has largely opened back up, large numbers of children whose parents delayed taking them for routine medical visits and skipped their immunizations are at risk of contracting once-common childhood illnesses like measles that vaccines had virtually eliminated.

Dr. Deborah Greenhouse, a pediatrician affiliated with Prisma Health Children’s Hospital and past president of the South Carolina chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said that doctor’s offices are now filling with young children who have contracted non-COVID-19 respiratory illnesses.

“We’re in a completely different scenario,” than we were early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Greenhouse said Monday during a press briefing at Prisma Health Children’s Hospital in Columbia, where health experts pushed the importance of routine vaccinations.

While there are still plenty of children coming down with COVID-19, many are now arriving at doctor’s offices with respiratory syncytial virus, croup and hand, foot and mouth disease, she said.

“We’re seeing all kinds of other things pop up that now are crowding our offices, crowding the emergency rooms, crowding the floors, crowding the intensive care units,” Greenhouse said. “And we have to pay attention to all of that because as we see this uptick in COVID and as we relax some of the things we’ve been doing, it starts to affect everybody.”

She said misinformation on social media has contributed to an unprecedented level of society-wide skepticism about immunizations, but attributes the drop in routine vaccinations in South Carolina to the fear of getting COVID-19, not general anti-vaccine sentiment.

“There was just this incredible, off-the-cliff drop off at the beginning of the pandemic in our well visits, and the immunizations went off the cliff at the same time,” Greenhouse said. “I don’t think there was really any general anti-vax sentiment, although certainly there is anti-COVID vax sentiment throughout the state that we are working so hard to combat. The drop off in general immunizations absolutely is due to the pandemic.”

With school starting up again in a couple weeks, outbreaks of diseases like measles and whooping cough are more likely to spread among children who aren’t up to date on their vaccinations, she said.

“We send the kids back to school without a high immunization rate against whooping cough, we’re going to see it a whole lot more,” Greenhouse said. “All of those diseases potentially can come back.”

Dr. Anna Kathryn Rye Burch, a pediatric infectious disease physician at Prisma Health Children’s Hospital, said a resurgence in vaccine-preventable illnesses could occur in South Carolina if immunization rates drop so much that it affects herd immunity to those diseases.

“The problem with children being behind on their vaccines and others being behind on their vaccines is that lowers that herd immunity,” she said. “It allows other viruses to come in and take hold of a situation where before we were all protected against because the majority of the population was vaccinated against that.”

Greenhouse couldn’t provide data on just how much lower immunization rates are for children than they were prior to the pandemic, but said at one point they were down more than 50% among Medicaid patients.

While that’s no longer the case, she said, immunizations remain reduced across the board, especially among adolescents.

“The more of us get vaccinated against COVID, the more of us get vaccinated against everything else that we have vaccines accessible for, the better off we’re all going to be and the easier it will be for us to move past the pandemic and get to the other side with our children being healthy,” Greenhouse said.

Summer is almost over in the Grand Strand. But the warm weather isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, which means there’s still plenty of time to take advantage of all the places and activities that the area has to offer. The Sun News has put together a summer video series that will help you do just that.

Each guide will center around Myrtle Beach may include spots in Horry and Georgetown counties.

First up, is a list of nearby places locals and visitors can visit to get away from the tourist traps and get involved in outdoor recreation. They are all free and open to the public.

The Horry County Bike & Run Park, located in Carolina Forest, features a 7-mile trail for beginner and advanced mountain bikers and runners. The trail system sits alongside the Intracoastal Waterway, which runs from Maine to Florida.

There is a parking lot and a small picnic area. This is a popular spot for tourists and locals alike. The park is open from dusk to dawn everyday.

Located in Murrells Inlet, Oyster Landing is a good place to spend time on the water. Visitors are likely to see people crabbing, fishing or picking oysters, if they’re not already making waves in a boat, kayak or tube. The boat landing, which is part of Huntington Beach State Park, is found on a dirt road a few miles from the park’s entrance. When coming up on the turn, drivers should slow down because it is easy to miss.

Oyster Landing has a small beach area, where locals and visitors can hang out and observe wildlife as it is home to many animal species.

The recreational area, which is located in Conway’s Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge, features natural trails, boardwalks and a picnic area. The 325-acre property provides hikers, walkers and mountain bikers with a 3-mile trail.

It also features a picnic area, scenic observation and visitor center. Hours are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Saturdays.

Tucked beside the state border, overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway, the park in Little River offers natural trails for hiking, biking and walking.

There are wooden boardwalks that cross over wetlands that allow for views of the scenery and wildlife. Visitors can also see decorated oyster shells hanging from the trees and are encouraged to hang their own shells and make a wish.

The coastal maritime forest is nestled in the heart of North Myrtle Beach as part of the Ocean Drive community. There, visitors can climb the high sand dunes and relax under the ancient oak trees.

They can also learn about the different plant species that live there through the many plaques located along the natural trail.

The city unveiled the dunes in October 2019 after a near three-year battle to preserve the area was threatened with redevelopment. In 2016, the property owners and developers DDC Engineers proposed construction of 31 single-family homes. This would have led to to demolishing or replanting of some large oaks, which the forest is known for.

When community activists Damien Triouleyre and Jane Vernon heard of this, they planned demonstrations and created a website and GoFundMe page, which helped them raise over $100,000. That, a $1.4 million contribution from the family of Charles Ingram and a grant of $500,000 from the S.C. Conservation Bank resulted in purchasing 7.24 acres of the 9.35 acre land. North Myrtle Beach also contributed $500,000 to the purchase.

Initially, the city attempted to get funding to buy the entire site, but was unsuccessful. Property owners and the city continued discussions, and the owners offered the 7.24 acres, which included the dunes.