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ATLANTIC CITY - For two years, Saif Chaudhry rented one of the units in the front of Schiff's Central Pier. His store was named Hot Spot.

Yesterday, the cheery name galled him.

He had to watch as fire investigators, parked on the Boardwalk, picked over the charred shell of that shop - just one of several units burned through by a ferocious blaze Saturday night.

"I'm sitting here, out of business," the 39-year-old said, perched across the street. "It's disaster."

Firefighters were looking for real hot spots - burning embers in the walls.

With the tightly packed units in the arcade, and a warren of makeshift accommodations built by the homeless population under the Boardwalk, firefighters had to search high and low Sunday for a complete picture of injuries and damage.

The three-alarm fire took hold at about 6:30 p.m. Saturday night and burned until about 11 p.m., according to officials, who think the blaze started in a pizza shop unit.

The arcade, which sits where Tennessee Avenue meets the beachfront, suffered most of its damage to its southwest wing.

Investigators have not settled on a cause.

"We're going to be here tomorrow," Chief James Foley of the Atlantic City Fire Department said Sunday from the scene.

Asked whether they had ruled out arson, Foley said, "We haven't ruled out anything at this point."

One firefighter was taken to the hospital for treatment, and a shop owner - Chaudhry - was treated for smoke inhalation, he said.

While work on estimating the cost of the losses and damage has just begun, some of the pier's dozens of tenants arrived to salvage a few small gains.

Staff with jangling keys walked along the covered arcade, opening the vaults to save hundreds of quarters from the "crane-games."

Even with the takings retrieved, much of the inventory remained.

"Some of these are up to $500," said Capt. Michael Ruley, gazing at the banks of game-cabinets, full of stuffed animals. Tigger and Tweetie-bird cartoon toys peered out, smoke-charred faces pressed against the glass. "We can't move any of this until the insurance people have looked at it."

Bob and Abraham Schiff, the owners of the building, could not be reached for comment Sunday, but Bob Schiff visited the scene that morning, Ruley said.

Like many tenants, Chaudhry said he paid his $8,500 monthly rent for the chance to sell casual souvenirs to passing tourists. Hot Spot sold anything and everything with an Atlantic City logo.

When the fire swept through an adjacent unit, Chaudhry, who was sitting outside the arcade yesterday evening, says he saw flames from that shop setting fire to racks of T-shirts at the Hot Spot entrance.

In daylight, the cement walls tell the rest of the story, said Ruley. "We can see spalling," he said, pointing to cracks and blisters there.

"That's the result of high heat, where moisture boils fast out of the wall," he said. "That tells us the fire burned to at least 1,800 degrees."

But while the arcade, dating to the 1920s, has been partly gutted, what survived the fire intact was the historic 1880s structure underneath.

"There's no structural damage to the pier itself," Foley said.

That made passers-by feel bolder about stepping up close to the security cordon to take a look.

"We could see the fire from our hotel room," said Jerry Reilly, who with his wife, Rita, had just checked out of their 42nd-floor room at Caesars. They walked to the pier, they said, since it was always a stop on their frequent beach visits.

"We were shopping in these stores last summer," Jerry said, as Rita added, "The stores change, but the building we've always remembered."

Chaudhry, meanwhile, has nothing left to sell.

Amid ruined inventory worth thousands of dollars, stacks of T-shirts lay on the floor, soaking up the runoff from fire hoses.

Contact Juliet Fletcher:

609-272-7251

JFletcher@pressofac.com

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