Playland Castaway Cove Seeks Indoor Photos of Arcade for Fire Investigation

By: Michael Mandarino, Follow South Jersey Managing Editor

Photo; Isaiah Showell | Follow South Jersey

OCEAN CITY, N.J. — Playland Castaway Cove has asked community members to send any pictures they have of the interior of the arcade that burned in a four-alarm fire over the weekend.

Anyone with photos is asked to send them to playland@boardwalkfun.com. Your photos could help investigators as they continue to examine potential causes of the fire.

The four-alarm fire began at approximately 7:40 a.m. on Saturday and caused “extensive damage” to the building that houses a popular arcade on the boardwalk of Ocean City. Nobody was inside the building at the time of the fire, so no injuries have been reported at the time of publication. The cause of the fire is unknown, but it didn’t appear to cause any structural damage to the surrounding boardwalk, according to Ocean City.

“Thank you for all of the support the last 24 hours,” Playland Castaway Cove wrote in a statement on Facebook. “We continue to pray for the first responders that are still on site and can’t thank them enough for all they have done.”

Fire crews from several different South Jersey municipalities managed to control the blaze by late Saturday morning. According to The Atlantic City Press, Playland vice president Brian Hartley couldn’t be on scene to examine the damage because of a recent positive COVID-19 test. He told the newspaper that, based on videos and photos he’s seen, the building suffered severe damage.

“Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen from videos that people have sent me, the building’s at a total loss,” Hartley told the Atlantic City Press.


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