Fire Destroys Gilford Park Home

A fire under investigation by the Ocean County Prosecutors and Sheriff’s Office gutted a vacant Gilford Park single-family home at 10 p.m. Monday, flooding Elizabeth Avenue with smoke and forcing the evacuation of a neighboring property.

The one-story home at 406 Elizabeth Ave. suffered severe structural damage after the fire was reported at 10:01 p.m., said Toms River Fire District 1 Chief Sam Seaman.

Toms River Fire Companies 1 & 2 and East Dover fire companies responded and extinguished the fire, which ripped through several rooms and the attic space of the vacant home, Seaman said.  Ortley Beach First Aid squad also was on scene during the fire, as six apparatus lined the residential neighborhood to battle the blaze, under control in about a half hour, Seaman said.

 “When I pulled up there was heavy smoke and visible fire,” Seaman said. “The smoke had spilled into the roadway.”

Flames on the seaside of the home were coming out of a window, and firefighters attacked the fire with one hose there before going around the other side of the house to push back the fire coming out of a window on that side, Seaman said.

“We pushed it back with the hose on this side through the window, then pushed it back on the other side through the window, and then came round the front,” Seaman said. “The front door was closed. We breached in through the front door, and then fought it back from the inside.”

Seaman said it was an extremely hot fire, creating some exhaustion among the firefighters. In the rush to attach a hose to a nearby Elizabeth Avenue fire hydrant, firefighter Dan Goresh suffered a minor injury when he was struck in the head by the 5-inch hose coupling as it was pulled from the fire truck, Seaman said.

“They’re hot and tired,” said the chief after 11 p.m., still on the scene to oversee the overhaul of the property after the preliminary investigation by the Toms River Bureau of Fire Prevention and county officials. "They did an exemplary job. The team attacked the fire and had it under control in under a half hour."

The home, which sits at the base of Coolidge Avenue in Gilford Park, had its eastern walls completely consumed by the fire, a large gaping hole where the window flames were first visible from, just part of the structural damage. Seaman said nearby trees and brush were not affected, and neighboring properties were temporarily evacuated but sustained no fire damage.

Investigating with the Toms River Bureau of Fire Prevention is Officer Thomas DiMichele and Andrew Chencharick along with the Ocean County sheriff’s Department.