By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
This was supposed to be the first summer that Janice Pantano could truly relax and enjoy the Sea Isle City vacation home owned by her family since 1964.
She was planning to “kick back and chill” at the shore following her 2018 retirement that closed out a 40-year career with pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson.
However, the family vacation home at 5605 Central Avenue makes that impossible this summer. It is a charred hulk now – severely damaged by a May 23 fire that started in Pantano’s SUV in the driveway and spread to the house.
“I am not really enjoying my summer now because of all this insurance stuff,” Pantano said in an interview Friday.
She is waiting to hear from her insurance company whether the house can be saved or must be demolished and rebuilt. For the time being, the home remains boarded up. The fire left one whole side of it looking like burned toast.
Pantano’s parents, Rose and Frank Pantano, bought the shore house in 1964. Now 62 years old, Janice Pantano was just 7 when she first began vacationing in Sea Isle. She said she will always have fond memories of the house, even if it must be torn down.
“The memories are always in my heart,” she noted.
She doubts that the house can be salvaged, in large part because the inside is “totally trashed.” She suspects it would be just as costly to gut the interior, renovate the house and bring it up to existing flood standards as it would to build an entirely new home.
“I want to rebuild, but not with the same four walls,” she said.
Janice Pantano's Hyundai SUV was little more than a burned-out hulk sitting in the driveway. It has since been removed.
Pantano’s full-time residence is in Blue Bell, Pa. The fire erupted the night she arrived in Sea Isle to spend the Memorial Day weekend. She said she looked outside that night and noticed what appeared to be steam coming from her 2014 Hyundai Santa Fe Sport. Later, she saw flames shooting up from the SUV.
“I got the car out of the shop the day before the fire and it was totally fixed,” Pantano said of her Hyundai.
Jumping from the car to the house, the flames caused extensive damage before they were extinguished by the Sea Isle Fire Department.
Pantano spoke kindly about the volunteer firefighters who battled the blaze, but she said it took them about 20 minutes to arrive on the scene. She believes it is time for Sea Isle to create a professional fire department providing around-the-clock protection.
Just a few days after the fire, Pantano, her sister, Maryann Pantano Davis, and other homeowners appeared at a City Council meeting to urge Sea Isle officials to start a paid fire department instead of relying on volunteer firefighters.
The blaze at the Pantano home was the latest in a series of major house fires in Sea Isle dating to late 2017. One of the fires destroyed three adjacent duplexes on 54th Street and killed an 89-year-old woman.
Some homeowners have been calling on Sea Isle officials to replace the volunteer fire department with a professional one.
Although the fires appeared to be accidental, an official cause was not established for at least two of them, authorities said. Pantano’s fire started in the engine compartment of her SUV, according to a police report.
Pantano is anxious to see the fire report for her house. In the meantime, the home sits empty while Pantano waits to discuss its fate with her insurance company.
She occasionally spends vacation time in Sea Isle with friends and family members. But this is clearly not the relaxing, post-retirement summer she expected.
“There’s so much to consider,” she said in frustration.
