Horry County Fire Chief Joey Tanner Is Out. The County Won’t Say Why.

Posted Wednesday, November 11, 2026 10:12 am

David Hucks (via MyrtleBeachSC)

By David | Myrtle Beach News · Nov 11, 2026 https://x.com/myrtlebeachnews

Horry County Fire Chief Joey Tanner is gone, and the people who answer to taxpayers aren’t explaining why.

Joseph “Joey” Tanner, Horry County Fire Chief, who has led Horry County Fire Rescue since December 2015, stopped working for the county on Tuesday, Nov. 10, according to department spokesperson Tony Casey, who confirmed the departure to several local newsrooms. Deputy Fire Chief Mike Norket will run the agency on an interim basis while the county looks for a permanent replacement, and a search is expected to start in the coming weeks.

Beyond that, the county has offered almost nothing. Casey declined to tell The Post and Courier whether Tanner had been fired, and he told News13 he could not say whether the departure had been expected . No reason has been given.

There was no retirement announcement, no statement from the county administrator and no public thanks from council for nearly 11 years of service. When a respected department head leaves on good terms, local governments usually say so — loudly. The absence of that routine courtesy is itself part of the story.

For people who live in the unincorporated parts of the county, and for anyone who has ever needed an ambulance here, the question of why the top fire official is suddenly gone isn’t gossip. It’s a question about how one of the county’s most important agencies is being run.

A Closed Door on the Same Day

The timing is hard to ignore. On the same day Tanner’s employment ended, Horry County Council’s public safety committee spent more than an hour in a closed-door session to discuss what county attorney David Jordan called “employment matters. When members returned to open session, they took no votes and did not say what they had discussed.

To be clear, no official has connected that meeting to Tanner’s exit, and The Post and Courier’s reporting does not draw that link either. It is possible the two are unrelated.

But it is worth understanding what South Carolina law does and does not allow here. Public bodies may go behind closed doors to talk about hiring, discipline, compensation or the release of an employee — Horry County’s own meeting agendas spell out that exact language when council enters executive session [Horry County Government, Council Agenda]. What they cannot do in private is take formal action. Votes must happen in public.

Since no vote was taken, the decision about Tanner — whether it was a firing, a forced resignation or a voluntary exit — may not have required council action at all. Horry County’s administrator runs day-to-day government and oversees more than 30 departments organized under three divisions, including public safety. That points to the administrator’s office, currently led by Barry Swaby, as the place where accountability for this decision most likely sits. Residents who want answers should direct their questions there, and to their own council members.

No Public Sign of Trouble

What makes the silence more striking is that nothing in Tanner’s recent public record suggested a chief on the way out.

tanner is gone — Horry County Fire Chief Joey Tanner is gone with no word from Horry County

His credentials are about as strong as they come in South Carolina’s fire service. Before Horry County, he spent 31 years with the Georgetown Fire Department, 18 of them as chief. He holds a fire science degree, graduated from the National Fire Academy’s Executive Fire Officer Program and earned the Chief Fire Officer designation. The South Carolina State Association of Fire Chiefs named him the state’s top chief in 2023, and he gave a keynote address at an International Association of Fire Chiefs conference in Dallas in 2024. State officials also credited his crews with holding a March 2025 Carolina Forest wildfire — which burned more than 2,000 acres — without the loss of a single property or any injuries.

The weeks just before his exit look even more routine. On Oct. 27, Tanner stood alongside Council Chairman Gardner and Councilman Masciarelli in Columbia as HCFR’s new pre-hospital blood program won a South Carolina Association of Counties award [Horry County Government, 2026]. Around the same time, he was publicly celebrating $2 million in state money for a new fire station to serve Socastee and Burgess, describing how traffic makes it hard for crews to reach those neighborhoods quickly. Earlier in October, he was before council making the case for more staff, including another mechanic for a fleet where four people keep roughly 70 pieces of fire apparatus running.

That’s a chief accepting awards, landing state money and pitching his next budget — not one who looked to be on thin ice. Barely two weeks separate the award photo in Columbia from his last day.

There are only a few ways to read that gap. Something happened quickly. Or something had been building out of public view. Or Tanner chose to leave for reasons of his own, and the county has simply decided not to say so. Myrtle Beach News is not going to guess which. But the public record, as it stands, does not explain what happened — and that is precisely why officials should.

What the Public Is Entitled to Know

“It’s a personnel matter” is often treated as the end of a conversation. Under South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act, it’s closer to the beginning.

The Municipal Association of South Carolina, which advises local governments on FOIA compliance, notes that the law defines public records broadly enough to include virtually all personnel records, and that most items in a personnel file are presumptively open, though some exemptions exist [Municipal Association of SC, n.d.]. For employees earning $50,000 or more, and for department heads, the law requires disclosure of their exact compensation [Municipal Association of SC, 2023]. The association’s training materials add that this covers total compensation, not just base salary [Municipal Association of SC, 2025].

That matters here. If Tanner left with a severance package, a separation agreement or a payout of accrued leave, that is taxpayer money — and the amount should be obtainable.

The reasons behind a departure are harder to pry loose. A long-standing South Carolina Attorney General’s opinion advised that disciplinary actions and performance appraisals are personal records that generally should not be released [SC Attorney General, 1977]. Most FOIA exemptions are optional, though, not mandatory [Municipal Association of SC, 2022]. In other words, the county may withhold some of this. It is not required to.

Local history shows how these stories often come out. When an Horry County police deputy chief resigned in March 2025, it was a separation document filed with the state’s Criminal Justice Academy — not a county statement — that revealed he had been told about an internal investigation before he quit [WBTW News13, 2025]. That paper trail exists because of law enforcement certification rules; there is no direct equivalent for a fire chief. So for now, the facts will depend on what the county chooses to release, and on what the public and the press formally request.

Myrtle Beach News submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to HCFR spokesperson Tony Casey seeking Tanner’s employment contract, any resignation letter or separation agreement, records of any final payout, and the agenda and notice for the Nov. 10 public safety committee meeting. As of publication, the county had not responded. Under state law, a public body generally has 10 business days to say whether it will release records like these. We will report what we receive — and what we’re denied.

Why This Matters on Your Street

Leadership turnover at the top of a fire department isn’t just an org-chart change. HCFR is a combined career and volunteer department that, according to an unofficial fire service wiki, covers roughly 1,255 square miles and handled more than 90,000 calls in a year — and it provides advanced life support ambulance service countywide, including inside cities that run their own fire departments [Fire Departments Wiki, 2026]. If you call 911 for a medical emergency almost anywhere in Horry County, this is likely the agency that answers.

The interim chief inherits that responsibility in the middle of budget season. The new Socastee-Burgess station still has no site, and county leaders plan to discuss the remaining funding at a Nov. 19 budget retreat. The October staffing requests — covering EMS, fire investigations, training, wildfire response and maintenance — still have no confirmed price tag, and it’s unclear which ones council will fund.

Staffing is not a new pressure point. Back in 2018, the local firefighters union said Horry County crews were leaving for departments like Myrtle Beach, citing heavy overtime and low pay [Daily Dispatch, 2018]. Unexplained turmoil at the top is not the kind of signal that helps recruit or keep frontline firefighters.

It also fits a pattern Horry County residents have seen before. In 2019, the county’s head of public safety, Joe Huffman, was suddenly out of a job, with a councilman — not a formal announcement — confirming his last day. Again and again, public safety leadership changes here have been explained late, partially, or through documents rather than by the officials responsible.

What’s Next

In the short term, Deputy Chief Mike Norket leads HCFR, and the county says a search for a permanent chief will begin in the coming weeks [WMBF News, 2026]. The next public opportunity to hear from council about fire service funding is the Nov. 19 budget retreat [WPDE ABC15, 2026].

Between now and then, there are straightforward questions the county can answer without violating anyone’s privacy:

Did Tanner resign, retire or was he terminated?
Is there a separation agreement, and what does it cost taxpayers?
Was the Nov. 10 executive session about the fire chief’s position?
Who will run the search for a new chief, and will the finalists be named publicly before a hire?

These aren’t hostile questions. They are the minimum a county owes the residents who fund its fire service and depend on it in their worst moments. A chief with Tanner’s record — and the public he served for more than a decade — deserves a clearer account than silence.

Myrtle Beach News will keep asking. If you have information about this story, contact us.