Large fire erupts on Atlantic City boardwalk

This story originally appeared on 6abc.

A 2-alarm fire erupted on the Atlantic City boardwalk on Wednesday afternoon.

Crews were called to the scene shortly before 4 p.m. on the 1100 block of the boardwalk at the Resorts Casino Hotel.

According to officials, the flames began underneath the boardwalk and spread upward into the casino.

The fire spread to the building’s exterior wall and part of the sign above the boardwalk entrance.

Video from the scene shows large plumes of smoke and flames coming from inside the building.

The smoke and fire forced a brief evacuation of businesses located near the building’s boardwalk entrance, officials say.

The casino floor remained open, however.

Aris Matos and his wife Michelle of Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania, were having dinner at a restaurant in the casino when he looked outside and saw clouds of smoke.

“We ate some more and then I saw the smoke was getting thicker and thicker,” he said. “Then I saw one of the workers in the restaurant run outside with a fire extinguisher to try to put it out, but the flames were already too big, and he ran back inside the restaurant and told us all to evacuate.”

Matos said the flames were burning the facade of the casino including a canopy that melted, with pieces of it dripping down near where firefighters cut away a section of the boardwalk with chainsaws so they could spray underneath at the source of the blaze.

Firefighters were able to put out the blaze at approximately 4:30 p.m.

Atlantic City Fire Chief Scott Evans said the two-alarm fire required 30 firefighters to extinguish, describing it as “pretty serious.”

No injuries were reported at the scene.

The cause of the fire was not yet determined. Evans said several possibilities were being looked at, including an electrical malfunction from utilities running underneath the walkway or that the fire might have been caused accidentally by homeless people taking shelter under the walkway, a not-infrequent event in Atlantic City.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.