At least three multimillion dollar beachfront homes have burned to the ground in Sea Isle City, N.J. along the 7800 block of Pleasure Avenue and the beach.
They caught fire this afternoon around 4 p.m., and that fire, fueled by the wind, spread quickly, sending black and gray smoke out that could be seen for miles.
"The wind was blowing hard from the beach, going towards the bay," said Loretta Giello, who has a summer home on 85th Street. "And I kept hearing sirens and sirens, and I saw so much black smoke that I started to run down there to see what was happening."
The homes were side-by-side townhouses, each about 2,000 square feet, according to Sea Isle City Mayor Leonard Desiderio. According to data on the real estate website Zillow.com, the beachfront homes along the 7800 block of Pleasure Avenue were listed for more than 2 million dollars.
Giello said multiple fire engines have responded from different shore towns but that Sea Isle is not as easy to access because the bridge coming in from Avalon is closed.
"So the fire trucks had to go all the way down Route 9, or the Parkway, until they get into Sea Isle and that's another 15 or 20 minutes," Giello said. Mayor Desiderio said however, he did not think the bridge being out affected response time.
NBC10 First Alert Weather Meteorologist Sheena Parveen said onshore winds were gusting near 15-20 mph at the time of the fire, which is pretty typical.
Mayor Desiderio said there are no injuries, but that some of the nearby homes are also damaged due to the intense heat from the fire. He said the homes that burned are vacation homes, not year-round homes.
Sea Isle City is a small Cape May County city of around 2,000 year-round residents that swells in the summers when vacationers flock to its beaches. But like much of the Jersey Shore, it was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
That storm damage cost the city an amusement park just this year, when the owner of Gillian's Funland said the severely damaged park would have to close.
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