A beach club cabana fire resulted in a brief closure of Route 36 in Sea Bright Wednesday night, according to a report by the political blog MoreMonmouthMusings.
The blaze, at the Driftwood Cabana Club, was being investigated as a possible arson, Councilman Read Murphy says in a video interview shot by blogger Art Gallagher.
Called in as a possible beach bonfire at 10:07p, the fire was “spinning out over the top of the buildings” when borough police arrived, Murphy says. “It turned out it was a cabana, fully involved.”
Volunteer companies from Highlands, Rumson, Monmouth Beach, Oceanport and Long Branch also responded, Gallagher reports.
The fire was the latest of “seven or eight” small blazes in a dumpster, a porta-john, in back yards over the last three weeks, Murphy says.
The borough has an ignominious history of arson owing to an intentionally set fire that killed four men, all of the deinstitutionalized psychiatric patients, in 1977.