Atlantic City casinos reopening today after Hurricane Irene

Over the weekend, since shutting down on Friday evening, the casinos have lost millions of dollars in potential earnings. While all eleven of the casinos closed their gaming halls, some of the facilities kept open their hotels. The fear among some of the officials was that travelers who were booked for the hotels would not be able to find other shelter from the storm if the casino resorts ordered them out. The safety issue, however, outweighed those fears at several resorts.

Gaming regulators will have the final say as to which of the casinos open, and at what time. The casinos will have to go through a laundry list of approvals from regulators. State checks included following procedures for returning money to cash cages and testing their computer systems, but those are expected to be routine. The goal is to ensure that customers come back to the same, fair games, that they left when the casinos closed Friday. Luckily, casinos reported only minor cosmetic damage from the storm.

The city's casinos have been struggling economically since the 2008 economic recession. The shut down caused by Hurricane Irene will only increase the amount of stress that gaming executives are feeling. In addition to the recession, increased competition from several Northeastern states has made it difficult for AC casinos to return to their glory days of the eighties and nineties.

The closure off all casinos in the city was only the third of its kind in the entire existence of the gaming industry in New Jersey. Only one other time was the closures tied to a hurricane. Much of the East Coast has felt the effects of Hurricane Irene since Thursday, with the storm clearing through on Sunday morning.

Atlantic City’s famed boardwalk appeared to have escaped the storm without major damage, though the beachfront suffered significant erosion in some places. Emergency management officials reported no storm-related fatalities in Atlantic County.