Fire's legacy still burns in county
Posted by the Ocean County Observer on 05/21/07
There was fire everywhere that horrible weekend, from Jackson to Brick, Berkeley and Ocean Gate, even in downtown Toms River.
Three people died in Jackson, where fires swept across 41,000 acres.
The downtown Toms River fire claimed 11 businesses worth about $750,000 at the corner of Main and West Water streets.
Seventy-five homes were lost across the county. Countless poultry coops and farm buildings burned.
One fire swept east from Pemberton and was not stopped until it reached the Garden State Parkway at Oyster Creek, just a week before Jersey Central Power & Light Co. announced its plans to build a nuclear power plant there.
In the county about 100,000 acres burned, according to Assistant District Fire Warden David Harrison of Pine Beach.
It was a variety of fires, 34 in all, not a single blaze, that swept the county on April 20-21, 1963.
Harrison counted four in Jackson, one each in Brick, Lacey, and Berkeley, and, of course, the downtown fire.
A light rain April 22 did not put out the woods fires.
Harrison said it took five days to control them.
Ocean, Monmouth and Burlington counties were all declared disaster areas, making low-interest loans available from the Small Business Administration. Ocean was the hardest hit.
In the three-county region, 183,000 acres of woods were burned, 186 homes and 197 buildings were destroyed, and seven people died.
Three of them were members of the same family.
Alice MacQueen, 59, her daughter, Alice, 19, and son, Istabel, 29, suffocated while trying to get out of their two-story frame house, State Police at the Toms River Barracks determined.
They were found in the ruins of the home on Route 528 in Holmanville in Jackson, where she had lived for 48 years.
Commander Jack Turner, a security officer at Navy Lakehurst, rescued two children from a burning house on Stump Tavern Road in Jackson.
Sailors from Navy Lakehurst and airmen from McGuire Air Force based joined the state Forest Fire Service and local firefighters in battling the blazes.
Harrison said a small blaze in Berkeley and Ocean Gate along the bayfront claimed eight homes. Twenty-two others were destroyed in Jackson, and 19 in Brick.
Firemen were still hard at work battling the forest fires when, on Sunday, April 21 at about 1:30 p.m., flames were reported shooting from the Marion Inn building at Main and West Water streets in Toms River.
About 400 firemen battled the blaze for four hours, pumping more than a million gallons of water from hydrants and more from the river, before they brought it under control.
Seven businesses were lost in the Marion Inn building. Included were the Mill End Shop, Porter's Travel Agency, Teddy's, Charles Feller's store, Trudy's Yarn Shop, A.E. Graham and Sons, and the Fish Market.
Three other buildings north of the Marion Inn on Main Street were destroyed too.
Included were the Purpuri Shoe Store, Halligan Drugs, E.W. Russell and the Penn Jersey Store.
Druggist Francis Halligan managed to save 50,000 prescription records from his pharmacy.
Fire companies from Beach Haven to Point Pleasant Beach responded to the downtown blaze while the woods were still on fire. Forty firefighters were hurt in the downtown blaze, most suffering smoke inhalation or minor cuts.
It was the third blaze in five months in downtown Toms River. On Nov. 27, 1962 an eight-alarm blaze claimed Traco Drugs on Washington Street, doing $300,000 worth of damage. On Jan. 27, 1963, the Cake Box bakery burned, a loss put at $5,000.
Out west, Jackson put school buses to work evacuating people as fires menaced Cassville and Rova Farms.
Homes and farm buildings were lost in Van Hiseville, on Cedar Swamp and Jackson Mills Roads; in Holmeson, where a sawmill was claimed; and on Stump Tavern Road, where the Pentecostal Church burned. There were fires in Whitesville and Leesville, too.
An estimated 7,000 chickens died on poultry farms in Jackson.
In Adamston in Brick, fire claimed 22 homes and six outbuildings, burning on both sides of Mantoloking Road. The blaze shut the Mantoloking Bridge to all but firefighters.
There were also blazes in Cedar Bridge Manor, and at the Brick landfill, where a township bulldozer was burned in a fire that swept from Sally Ike Road to the Garden State Parkway.
Don Bennett is a veteran reporter. |
