Residents escape, but trust burns in Atlantic City high-rise blaze

In the shadow of casino glitter, a four-alarm fire turned a 13-story residential tower into a chute of smoke and desperation Wednesday morning.

Everyone got out alive from the Brighton Towers on Atlantic Avenue, a fact officials will rightly repeat. But the narrow escape for hundreds lays bare a more uncomfortable truth: that safety in such a place is a frantic gamble against time, aging infrastructure and the absence of basic modern protections.

The fire, sparked in an eighth-floor bedroom before 5 a.m., sent flaming debris past windows and filled stairwells with choking smoke.

Residents like Jeffrey Simmons, abruptly awakened, saw this horror show from his third-floor apartment. “I thought she was kidding,” he said of his girlfriend’s warning. Then he saw the flames. They fled.

It was not so simple for everyone. Deputy Fire Chief Paul Hess described “organized chaos” as firefighters, navigating crowded, smoky hallways, found residents with mobility issues sitting helpless in their apartments.

These individuals were carried onto balconies for air, then guided down multiple flights of stairs. This heroic effort was the only substitute for a system that should have been in place.

The Brighton Towers, a building of roughly 168 units housing an estimated 400 souls, has no sprinklers in the apartments themselves.

Only the common areas on the first floor are equipped. This is not a revelation to authorities; it is a known condition. It means a fire’s progress is checked not by automated suppression, but by the speed of human response and the courage of those who run toward what others flee.

The response, indeed, was swift and likely prevented tragedy.

Firefighters from multiple jurisdictions performed forced entries and exhaustive searches.

A police officer was treated for smoke inhalation and released. Five residents were evaluated at the scene. The fire was declared under control by 6:45 a.m.

Yet the outcome, while fortunate, is an indictment of a tolerated norm.

The building, officials noted, suffered heavy smoke damage from the eighth to twelfth floors and water damage down to the fourth.

At least a dozen units are now uninhabitable. Residents were shuttled to temporary shelters on city buses, their homes rendered useless by a blaze in a single room.

George Stefanides, president of the condominium association, praised the “very responsive” public safety teams.

Their performance deserves that credit. But gratitude is cold comfort for the displaced, and it is no lasting remedy.

The incident serves as a stark audit of what we accept for fellow citizens dwelling in towers by the sea—that their safety hinges on a chain of perfect reactions to an imperfect and perilous environment.

The Red Cross is assisting those displaced.

The cause of the fire is under investigation. And the residents, some of whom returned to dripping ceilings and damaged hallways, are left to consider their luck, and the disquieting vulnerabilities their home has revealed.

In a city built on chance, they have just held a winning ticket. The house, however, always wins, and this structure remains, for too many, a losing bet waiting to be called.