EDGEWATER, N.J. — The complex of luxury apartments burned down 15 years ago, before it was even finished, in what fire officials here described then as the worst blaze they had seen in decades.
The developers paid to settle lawsuits filed by people displaced from nearby homes, then got back to work with the same lightweight wood construction they had been using — faster to build with, but also more flammable.
On Wednesday, the complex, the Avalon at Edgewater, caught fire again, the flames raging even harder this time, displacing more than 1,000 residents of the apartments and surrounding buildings and producing a spectacle rarely seen in an era of modern construction: a luxury development destroyed by fire.
The blaze, which property managers initially described to residents in an email as “a minor fire,” lit the West Side of Manhattan from across the Hudson River, and closed streets and schools in this borough, where officials declared a state of emergency. The flames produced a wall of smoke so thick that it repeatedly forced back firefighters who had come from 35 surrounding towns to try to extinguish the flames.
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“The fact that there was no loss of life here is really a blessing,” Mr. Christie said, “an enormous blessing.”
Outside the center on Thursday morning, Priti Saldanah, 43, said that her apartment had been “absolutely gutted” by the fire. But she praised the efforts of the property owners and of the volunteers who had come from as far as Westchester County in New York.
“People are responding in amazing ways,” she said. “Thankfully, I’m connected to the community, so I have a place to stay. I’m more worried about the people who aren’t from here, who aren’t as connected. What are they going to do?”
Maria Isabel Cebolla, a young mother who lived in an adjacent building, said it was too soon to know what kind of help she would need, because she did not know how much damage her home had suffered. “Right now, we’re trying to find out if it’s livable,” she said.
Ms. Cebolla had heard about the fire from a delivery person, who called to tell her he was unable to get to the area because of the fire trucks. From her window, she watched the small fire grow in size.
“When I came downstairs, everyone in the lobby was looking up, like, ‘Wow, look at those flames,’ ” she said. “But when I went back upstairs with my baby, I saw the flames right outside of my window. It looked like hell.”
