Less than a year after Superstorm Sandy ripped into the boardwalk at the beach towns of Seaside Park and Seaside Heights, N.J., a fire Sept. 12 has leveled six blocks of the newly-rebuilt Jersey Shore destination.
According to radio calls reporting what became an enormous wind-blown blaze, smoke was seen in the early afternoon coming from under the southern end of the wood boardwalk near the popular frozen custard stand, Kohr's, whose roots at the location predate the boardwalk.
The fire spread rapidly, requiring as many as 400 firefighters to get the fire under control. Crews worked to dig up a swath of the boardwalk with heavy machinery in hopes of stopping the fire from spreading further. They filled the void with sand to construct makeshift dunes. Water was in short supply so it was pumped from the nearby Barnegat Bay, reports say.
As of the morning of Sept. 12, firefighters remained on scene to douse hotspots with water.
This section of the boardwalk became very well-known following Sandy since two symbols of the storm's effect on the Jersey shore—the roller coaster in the ocean and the inexplicably upright Ferris wheel—were located on Funtime Pier near the location of the fire. Almost all of the children's rides on the pier were lost to Sandy and the area remained closed this summer.
However, the small business structures lining the boardwalk were largely unaffected by the Oct. 29, 2012 superstorm. Now, reports say as many as 50 businesses are now destroyed, and the boardwalk—newly rebuilt from the sand up after Sandy—is again gone. Gov. Chris Christie declared a state of emergency. "This is obviously, just, an unthinkable situation," he said from the scene Sept. 12.
Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute, says fire is covered by a standard commercial insurance policy. Business owners will be compensated for the structures and contents. So, at the very least, "Businesses involved in this won't have the obstacle of having no flood insurance," says Hartwig. But it is unknown whether these small business have business interruption coverage, and to what extent. He says insurance adjusters will be on the scene today.
It is also not known whether the boardwalk was insured. Hartwig says he's attempting to find whether it is privately or municipally owned. The area damaged borders Seaside Heights and Seaside Park.
No matter the insurance coverage available to businesses owners for this tragedy, it likely does not assuage the heart-wrenching fact many of them almost immediately lost out-of-pocket expenses paid to rebuild after Sandy, and then endured a Summer in which tourist visitors to the shore were way down.
"This will be a multimillion-dollar event, though the damage is certainly not as extensive as when Sandy hit," says Hartwig. "Still, it's simply tragic. This community put in so much effort to rebuild."
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