An Atlantic City rooming house owner moved quickly to get his tenants back home Friday.
A New Year’s Eve fire in a third-floor bedroom at 1401 Memorial Ave. displaced 17 tenants.
People began moving back in to the first and second floors Friday afternoon. The third floor, where the fire was contained, and fourth floor remain boarded up.
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Michael Scanlon Jr., who owns the building with his father, said he pushed for the tenants to come back because many came to him “begging me to get them out of the mission, begging me to get them back in.”
Even though the fire was contained to one room, all of the tenants were forced to leave because of issues with the alarm systems caused by the fire, Scanlon said.
But he got the alarms re-installed and cleared by an alarm company. On Friday, an electrical inspector came out and the electricity was turned back on.
It was “against the advice of my insurance adjuster,” he admitted, but “I told him I was going to get everything working again so everybody has a place to stay while it’s cold outside.”
