Opinion: After the fire at Seaside Park, should boardwalks around the country be more prepared for fires?

The Jersey Shore is one of the most well known coastal areas of any state. This region, from the tip of Sandy Hook to the shores of old Cape May, is a very popular place for vacation traditions. However like all coastal areas, you must have something to ruin vacation traditions. There was no exception. Last year, Superstorm Sandy messed with the coastal communities of Mantoloking, Bay Head, Ortley Beach, Seaside Heights, and Seaside Park and left devastating damage in it’s wake. Ever since Memorial Day, residents of these towns had an amazingly quiet summer. Few people came. In my opinion, this was probably due to leftover Sandy damage. But good news came with the grand reopening of Casino Pier in Seaside Heights. This time, the people came. But one late summer day, these people would face another nightmare beyond words.

The day after the anniversary of 9-11 opened as quite a normal day for these communities. Children went to school. Businesses prospered with patrons. The boardwalks were bustling. At 2:05 PM however, this scene drastically changed. At Kohr's Frozen Custard in Seaside Park, not far from the sad scene of the Funtown Pier, which was destroyed last October by the wrath of Sandy, corroded wires under the business sparked and a fire started. This tiny fire was quickly discovered and needed to be put out. However, a majority of the fire crews were at a convention in Wildwood eighty miles south from Seaside Park. These firefighters, ranging from Mercer County, Burlington County, Ocean County, Atlantic County, Monmouth County, and so on, tried to rush to the blaze. But meanwhile in Seaside Park, thirty mph winds worsened the fire, making it spread to nearby Seaside Heights.

By the time crews arrived, the fire was already in full swing. They fought this ugly fire by dousing it with the usual water, but that didn’t stop it from eating away various business and the remnants of Funtown Pier. The crews wisely managed to dig a trench to help keep the fire from spreading further down, but some embers from the main fire sparked small ones that luckily were quickly put out.
Residents just gawked at this horrible sight as owners watched their businesses burning up to a crisp. This fire was so huge that people from as far as Ortley Beach could see the black cloud of smoke. While all this chaos was happening, New Jersey governor Chris Christie was quickly informed of the fire and later remarked, “ I just wanted to throw up.” When he arrived, nightfall was coming and the men were still fighting the fire. He helped to comfort local residents and gave a speech still while these brave firefighters fought this monster through the night. On the next day, Friday the 13th (eerie, right?) opened up to a scene of devastation equal to Sandy’s damage. All that was left was just a charred mess of businesses and to symbolize it all, a Funtown Pier sign was seen lying in a heap of rubble.

This, in my opinion, will just make recovery for Memorial Day 2014 even tougher. But how can future disasters like this one be prevented across the world? In the past, the Jersey Shore has dealt with many boardwalk fires. In 1987 a fire destroyed an amusement pier in Long Branch and caused the city to fall into decline. Even popular places such as Wildwood and Atlantic City have faced fires that would lead up to Seaside Park’s fire. But I am shocked that when these fires occurred, people did little to prevent further disasters. In Fact, I want boardwalk businesses and amusement parks to at least follow the fire safety code by having sprinklers installed to help douse large flames and have a fire evacuation route posted somewhere. I think that if Shore communities could adopt these safety measures, boardwalk fires would just be easily preventable. So please folks, try to help this community again by chipping in money to help pay for the damage or by holiday drives to help construction workers finish the job early. These sales could really help Seaside Park and to prevent it from going into a serious decline like Long Branch and Asbury Park, which declined because of serious competition and resulted in a ton of oceanfront decay.