New Jersey: autopsies to be conducted on four dead in motel fire

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/22/new-jersey-motel-fire-autopsies-four-dead

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Autopsies were being conducted on Saturday on the four people who died in a fire at a Jersey shore motel that housed some victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Al Della Fave, a spokesman for the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office, said the medical examiner's office is trying to identify the victims and determine how they died in the fire, which broke out at the Mariner's Cove Motor Inn in Point Pleasant Beach early on Friday morning.

An intense investigation into the cause of the blaze began on Friday afternoon after the last of the four bodies was removed. Eight people were injured in the fire. The probe into the cause is expected to take several days.

One of the inn's residents, Jon Frystock, said he was alive today because he had had to go to the bathroom. The New Jersey man lost his home during the superstorm, which hit on 29 October 2012, and was among 40 people staying at the motel when the fire broke out.

Frystock, who has diabetes and frequently has to use the bathroom, said he woke up early on Friday to find the motel ablaze. As he fled to safety, he pounded on doors and windows, warning other residents to get out. He left with the clothes on his back, his insulin kit and nothing more.

"I lost everything again but I'm alive," he said.

He said his home in nearby Brick was flooded with 6ft of water during Sandy that tore through his deck "like it was tissue paper". He has lived in rental properties since the storm.

Frystock and the other occupants of the inn were given temporary shelter in other motels in Point Pleasant Beach on Friday. The town is a popular Jersey shore summer resort where the dozen or so hotels and motels rely on people seeking cheap rentals to get them through the slow winter season.

Investigators used dogs specially trained to react to the presence of gasoline or other petroleum products that might have been used to start or accelerate a fire. The dogs sniffed at charred items and building debris at the curb and alongside the motel's outdoor swimming pool but showed no obvious reaction to anything.

Task Force One, New Jersey's elite urban search and rescue team that has responded to disaster scenes around the world, also joined the investigation.

The blaze was the second major fire at the Jersey shore in seven months, following a September blaze that destroyed about a third of the boardwalk in Seaside Heights and Seaside Park. The boardwalk had just been rebuilt after Sandy. It is now being rebuilt again and many of the same arson investigators who worked on the boardwalk fire are investigating the motel blaze.

Many of those injured in the Friday motel fire had burns and broken bones. Survivors described a chaotic scene of flames, smoke and screaming. Peter Kuch said he smelled smoke and opened his door to find a lounge area engulfed in flames. He dialed the emergency dispatcher, and by the time the call was completed, the flames were at his door and licking at the windows of his second-floor unit.

He decided to jump.

"I had to. There was no other way out," he said. "My window was only open an inch, and flames were already starting to come through it. There just was no other choice."

He sprained an ankle but said he was otherwise all right.