HAMPTON — For the hundreds of residents who gathered around the charred remains of four Hampton Beach businesses on Friday, the destruction seemed overwhelming, with an entire block having burned to the ground.

Hampton Deputy Fire Chief Steve Benotti said preventing the fire's further spread has emergency responders calling it a "win".

"We weren't sure we were going to hold it to the block of origin so it could have been much worse," Benotti said as he peered over the smoking remains on Ocean Boulevard.

Early Friday morning, a six-alarm blaze leveled the triangular-shaped block running along Ocean Boulevard between A Street and Ashworth Avenue. Nobody was seriously injured in the blaze but Benotti said two firefighters sustained unspecified eye injuries.

Fire investigators from the State Fire Marshal's Office were on scene Friday, assisting local officers in looking into the cause of a fire that Benotti said remains uncertain.

A panoramic photo shows the entire Hampton Beach block that was leveled by a Friday morning fire. (Geoff Cunningham/Democrat Photo) Click here to view Foster's prints for sale

The wind-fueled fire lit up the entire Hampton Beach strip as it consumed the Surf Motel, Happy Hampton Arcade and Mrs. Mitchell's, a local gift shop.

The fire also claimed a laser tag business and an old theater space that Benotti said was being used to store boats.

The fire scene was just a few businesses down from Ashworth by the Sea, a popular hotel on the Hampton Beach strip.

Benotti said an automatic alarm summoned local fire crews to the Surf Motel at 12:03 a.m. on Friday morning and initial crews arrived to find a smoke condition in the old, three-story, wood-framed building on Ocean Boulevard.

The deputy chief said first-arriving firefighters moved into the building to investigate and found a back room engulfed in flames.

The fire broke out during a time when power was out to thousands in the Seacoast area as a result of a violent windstorm that downed utility lines and battered coastal regions with winds gusting upward of 68 mph.

Benotti said the wind was still blowing at a 35 mph clip toward other residential structures as they tried to battle a fire that rapidly spread throughout all the buildings on the block.

Firefighters were summoned from departments ranging from Kittery, Maine, to Salisbury, Mass., and as far west and north as Raymond and Franklin. More than 40 crews responded to the fire and surrounded it to prevent it from spreading.

Benotti credited the quick and timely response of the Seacoast mutual aid group with helping to prevent it from spreading.

"We basically surrounded it and overpowered it," Benotti said.

The deputy chief said manpower and equipment were a must considering the fire was out of control and being blown toward more inland Hampton Beach neighborhoods which had to be evacuated by Hampton police officers.

On Friday, the surrounding residences and commercial buildings were covered in soot with some having melted siding as a result of their proximity to a fire visible from miles away.

Benotti said it took upward of six hours to bring the fire under control and the attack took place from the outside of buildings the deputy chief said are old and without more modern fire protections like firewalls.

"Everything was wood and built to burn in some respects," Benotti said.

A large crowd of onlookers gathered around the charred block on Friday morning when daylight painted a more clear picture of the destruction.

Firefighters on large ladder trucks remained on scene as of 11 a.m. and continued to douse the pile of burning rubble while excavators worked on the collapsed portions of buildings on A Street.

The businesses that burned are largely seasonal ones and were not occupied when the fire broke out.

Benotti has been fighting fires for 30 years and called Friday morning's blaze one of the biggest he has seen.

The deputy noted fires on the Ocean Boulevard strip tend to be big with coastal winds fueling their spreading to older buildings.

"It's always a challenge here on the beach because Mother Nature has a way of doing things," Benotti said.