John Doggett walks past the remains of a beachfront home at 11th Street and Beach View Drive on St. Simons Island Monday.  No one was injured in the fire Friday night.  Firefighters had to wait for the tide to recede enough to run hoses to the beach side, where most of the fire was. (Chris Viola / The Times-Union)

Beachfront home near lighthouse sustains $2.5 million in damage.
 

ST. SIMONS ISLAND - The tide phases figure into fishing and seining trips, beach walks and the movement of cargo vessels.

Friday night, the tide kept back firefighters battling a blaze that ultimately did $2.5 million in damage to a beachfront house off Beachview Drive near the lighthouse.

"Most of the fire was on the beach, and we couldn't get to the that side of the building'' said Harold Herndon, a deputy chief of the Glynn County Fire Department.

Firefighters had been on the scene about an hour before the tide receded enough to allow them to get lines to the side of the house overlooking the beach, he said.

"It was definitely a total loss,'' Herndon said. "The fourth floor collapsed onto the others.''

It was not the first time the tides hampered firefighters.

Five years ago, a fire started by roofers burned a $1.5 million beach house and spread next door to a duplex condominium that was worth about $4 million. In that blaze, debris rained down on firefighters as they tried to get between the condominium and the beach house, which were very close together.

"At least this time one was sitting four feet from the next one,'' Herndon said.

Herndon described the four-story house that burned Friday has being right up against the rocks that fortify the beach against erosion.

Glynn County Commissioner Cap Fendig said the owner of the house had the right to build there because the original structure on the lot was built long ago and was "grandfathered,'' making it exempt from more recent building setbacks.

The rocks were piled onto the beach in 1964 after a hurricane destroyed some houses along the beach.

"That didn't eliminate the right for people to build on their property,'' said Fendig, who has lived a short distance away from the burned house his entire life.

Fendig said the county did away years ago with a large-tired amphibious vehicle, called a duck, that might have been useful.

"If we'd had the duck, we could have fought the fire,'' he said.

The duck was used in rescues, but people didn't like it on the beach, Fendig said.

Fendig said there will always be trouble fighting fires along the beach and noted that in the early 1900s fire swept through the Waycross Colony, a collection of island getaways owned by Waycross residents.

terry.dickson@jacksonville.com (912) 264-0405