Parish on road to recovery 117-year-old Calais church buffeted by flames, water

CALAIS – Days after firefighters used chain saws to rip open the roof of a downtown church to halt the spread of a tenacious fire, a cleaning crew was able to wash down the pews and walls in the sanctuary of the 117-year-old building.

And days after thousands of gallons of water were hosed onto the big pipe organ that Kathy Francis has played for the past 20 years, she learned that the organ itself may have kept the Sept. 16 fire from spreading up a wall of the sanctuary and into the aged and brittle beams in the attic.

Far from being lost, the landmark red-brick home of the Second Baptist Church appears to have survived.

But the $100,000 fire and its aftermath have reminded the members that the structure is only part of the story. “The church is its people,” said Francis, who grew up in the congregation.

After the fire, some local churches stepped forward and offered the use of their buildings. City officials offered the Calais Elementary School. So the next Sunday, services were held at the school and more than 160 members were on hand.

The school gym is huge and impersonal, but members of the congregation said they felt a sense of coming together. They are hopeful they soon will be able to use the vestry next to the sanctuary for church services.

The cause of the fire hasn’t been determined. A group of church members had been in the building that Sunday evening for a committee meeting.

After the meeting, they locked the church and left.

When Francis received a phone call around 10 that night, she rushed to the scene.

Heavy, rolling black smoke was coming from the windows and eaves, but fire investigators believe the blaze began in the church basement.

Fire Chief Danny Carlow has speculated that the fire had been developing for some time in hidden spaces and basically filled the place with smoke. Officials at first believed the fire might have started as the result of an electrical problem, but later said they were uncertain of a cause. The Calais Police Department and the State Fire Marshal’s Office are still investigating.

Watching the destruction, members of the congregation gathered in a circle that night and prayed.

Janet Lovely, chairwoman of the church’s board of trustees, also grew up in the church. She, too, went to watch when she heard the news. “It was hard. Especially when they pulled all of the firemen out because they thought the roof might go, and they thought everything was going to go. That was pretty scary,” she said.

Lovely, along with others, got firefighters to help remove some keepsakes from the church, including the church Bible, the communion set and a large wooden cross. They also were able to rescue some office supplies and filing cabinets. Still, she said, she visited the site after the fire and found it heartbreaking.

Francis, the organist, said she learned a few days later that the pipe organ could be repaired. “It was exciting. I watched them pour all that water into the back of the organ. All week long, I kept thinking, ‘I shouldn’t feel like this. It’s just an organ,'” she said. “It’s not flesh and bone, and that’s not what our work is about.”

Jody Deacon, who serves as Sunday school secretary, had nothing but praise for the firefighters who helped save the church. She said it was difficult to listen to the chain saws they used to break through the roof. “There was one point when I heard glass shattering. … but the firefighters were fantastic,” she said.

Fire has been the congregation’s enemy before. A local history says a group of Baptists built a church downtown in 1842, then built a new building on Church Street that was dedicated in 1857. It burned Oct. 22, 1882, and the present building was built in its place and dedicated on June 5, 1884.

Deacon said she looks forward to the latest rebuilding.

“We don’t have to start from scratch. We have a good foundation buildingwise, peoplewise and faithwise, to rebuild, and that’s what we will do. I have no doubt,” she said.

Cindy Richendollar, the assistant Sunday school secretary and a substitute Sunday school teacher, said that although the congregation held its first services after the fire in the school gymnasium, “believe it or not, the spirit of the Lord was in that school.” Sunday school was held as usual. “The people are the church … and the spirit was still there, because God was there,” she said.