News

Landscaping business up and running despite weekend fire

JERSEY SHORE – Despite the devastation left by Sunday morning’s blaze, Ethan Crist and his landscaping business, Cutting Edge, is up and running to meet his clients’ needs.

Although the blaze at 281 River Road leveled his home and the garage where he stored seven company trucks, Crist said he kept all his zero-turn lawn mowers and other essential equipment in a barn down the road.

At the urging of his insurance agent, Crist was actually out cutting grass Monday morning since it was likely going to be a day or two before the agent could meet with him.

“We’re still going. We can keep mowing,” he said.

In a brief phone interview a day after the fire, Crist said he was very grateful for the support of his family and neighbors at such a trying time.

Fearing that Crist was trapped inside the burning house, a neighbor and others tried desperately to break into the house to reach him.

Crist said he was working on some of his equipment at a nearby property when the fire was reported by a neighbor about 7:10 a.m. He was coming down Main Street (River Road) on a skid steer when he saw the blaze. Family and friends could not reach him because his cellphone was in the house.

Crist said the property and his business were fully insured.

The fire burned out of control for 90 minutes, but volunteer firefighters worked another three hours to douse hot spots.

Practically all seven trucks in the garage were pulled out because they just kept burning, Joseph Mitchell, deputy fire chief of Citizens Hose Company, said.

Crist lived above the garage. Much of the second-floor collapsed early on in the fire.

“There were just so many hidden spaces of fire, and we wanted to do all we could so that the fire wouldn’t rekindle,” Mitchell said.

A state police fire marshal was investigating, trying to determine the origin and cause of the fire.