This is a blog version of a Facebook posting from July 28, 2026. See the source posting for many reader memories.
Evening history. More Topsail Island. Let’s go back to Thursday, May 17, 1984, and the fire that destroyed Paradise Pier on West Onslow Beach.
Built in [goes here], the 650-foot long pier was a landmark on the north end of the island.
The fire was reported at 6:53 p.m. by a woman at a nearby campground. It started in the tackle shop/snack bar, near two refrigerator units, witnesses later recalled.
Reported the next day’s Wilmington Star-News, “winds from the north clocked at 10 to 15 mph quickly sent the flames racing along the pier.”
Men and women who were fishing were trapped by the fire and jumped into the ocean. Reported the next day’s Jacksonville Daily News, surfers helped as many as eight anglers to shore.
“We kept moving back [from the burning shop],” said Lennis Proctor from Lucama, “but it kept catching up, so we hit the water.”
Others ran through the flames to escape the pier. Red Davis, from Lucama, watched his fellow resident Norman Lamb, 61, “run through the inferno.” Said Davis, “he put a rag over his face and he went on through.”
There were some 14 or 15 people on the pier, said another person.
Four fishermen were transported to Onslow Memorial Hospital where they were treated and released. Another man from Concord was admitted with a back injury.
Said the latter, Hugh Goodman 59, “It got hot real quick.” He told the Star-News in a phone interview, “I hurt my back when I jumped. I either hit a piling or I hit bottom. I really don’t know which.”
Three other people, two men and a woman, were admitted for rope burns suffered from “sliding down cords hanging from the pier.” [ These three may have been among the total five people injured, that the various news reports cited. ]
Reported the Star-News, at least eight fire trucks and five ambulances from four departments in Pender and Onslow counties responded.
Surf City Volunteer Fire Department was first to arrive at 7:03 p.m., and 11 minutes after receiving the call, said their Fire Chief Dan Medlin. Three fire trucks and two ambulances responded from Surf City, which was 11 miles away.
When firefighters arrived, the small building and “more than 100 feet of pier were burning,” much of it new planking that had been installed during recent renovations.
Said the chief in a telephone interview, the only way to put out a pier fire was to get onto the thing and pull up the decking plank by plank. “We were going to try to put ladders out in the water to get to it, but the fire was already a hundred feet down the pier by the time we got there.”
The emergency response included Surf City VFD, Turkey Creek VFD, Holly Ridge VFD, and Sneads Ferry VFD, plus Surf City Rescue Squad, Holly Ridge Rescue Squad, and Sneads Ferry Rescue Squad. (Decades later, both Sneads Ferry VFD and Sneads Ferry RS merged into Turkey Creek VFD.)
The ocean rescuers were identified as Cpl. Jeff Smithson, 19, a Marine stationed at Camp Lejeune, and two other teenage surfers—Chuckie Bell, 17, and Shane Tomlinson, 19. They were credited with saving several lives.
Noted the story, the rescuers used their surfboards to help the injured to shore, and the heat of the fire was “so intense that it melted the wax” on the boards.
“Most of them were elderly and couldn’t swim,” said Tomlinson in a news story. Though the water was only above five feet deep, they were “disoriented from the waves.”
He added, “we had them hold on the middle of the board and we could touch the bottom.” And “the waves weren’t too good before the fire started, then when we tried to get out the waves started picking up.”
The apparent cause of the fire was a short in electrical wiring at the tackle shop, said officials the day after the fire.
