Damage to historic church could be as much as $1M

FORT KENT – Church services won’t likely be held for a month in the St. Louis Catholic Church, the Rev. James Nadeau said Friday morning after viewing flood damage to the historic structure estimated at between $500,000 and $1 million.

Until the church can be readied, the pastor said Mass would be celebrated at normal hours at the Knights of Columbus Hall on Route 1 a couple of miles east of town.

The cellar of the huge structure was still filled with nearly 10 feet of water from the St. John and Fish rivers Friday morning. Nadeau expected pumps to arrive later in the day to begin clearing the basement.

Mud and trash remained on the first floor where water rose about three feet, covering the pews but stopping a couple of steps short of the sanctuary where Nadeau normally celebrates Mass.

The pastor and some volunteers had been able to move baptismal, marriage and funeral records to the second floor of the rectory before the water came rushing in there.

“We have no power, no heat, and mold and mildew is already forming,” Nadeau said as he walked through the church, water squishing out of the carpeting underfoot.

He said the downstairs of the rectory will have to be gutted. About $40,000 worth of carpeting in the church, laid down two years ago during a major renovation of the nearly 200-year-old structure, will have to be torn out. Pews will have to be removed for repair or replacement. A $60,000 organ that could not be moved before the flooding was demolished.

“We are overwhelmed,” said Nadeau, who has been pastor of the 1,000 or so parishioners of the church since August 2005. “We didn’t get word about the rising water until it was too late to do too much.”

Nadeau said that during weekend Masses he would be asking for volunteers to help with the cleanup and renovations.

St. Louis is one of five churches that Nadeau oversees in the St. John Valley. Another one of his churches, St. Joseph at Soldier Pond, was also underwater during the flooding over the past few days.

“We are doing, and we will do, whatever we can,” Nadeau said. “We will try to bring a semblance of how things were until they are.”