|
|
|
Photo Mary Ann Bragg
Flames engulf St. Peter the Apostle Church Tuesday morning, gutting the historic building and wrenching the hearts of neighbors and parishioners. |
|
Photo Sally Rose
The steeple of St. Peter the Apostle church, in the distance, toppled inward during the fire. |
|
St. Peter’s church destroyed by fire
By Elizabeth Winston
BANNER CORRESPONDENT
In one of the worst fires on the Outer Cape in recent memory, Provincetown’s historic St. Peter the Apostle Roman Catholic Church was destroyed on Tuesday by smoke and flames in a blaze that began early in the morning and took hours of effort from scores of Cape firefighters to control.
Led by Provincetown’s volunteer Fire Dept., fire trucks and emergency personnel from as far as Yarmouth battled the three-alarm fire for five hours in frigid post-snowstorm conditions before managing to bring the blaze completely under control around 11:30 a.m., according to Provincetown Fire Chief Mike Trovato. Only one minor injury was sustained in the course of the firefight, and the flames did not spread to the nearby rectory, church annex, or neighboring homes.
The cause of the fire was determined by a state police fire investigator to be accidental, most likely the result of an “electrical event,” Trovato and state Fire Marshal Stephen D. Coan announced in a press release issued late Tuesday afternoon.
Investigators believe the fire began approximately half an hour before a fire alarm in the church was triggered around 6:30 a.m., Trovato said. Fire Dept. volunteers arrived on the scene within minutes, and were quickly joined by all of Provincetown’s emergency vehicles and personnel. Firefighters first attempted to battle the fire from the interior of the church, but when flames began to reach above the main pews and into the open attic around 7:41 a.m., Trovato set off a third alarm and switched to an exterior attack, he explained.
“When we realized the fire had gotten away from us in the back of the church, we went to three alarms. The flames went into the attic — the steeple was acting like a vent — and once it went in there there was no stopping it,” said Trovato, a lifelong parishioner of the 130-year-old church himself.
“Initially, we had fighters inside with hoses for half an hour, trying an interior attack. But when we realized the fire was into the attic it was suicide to stay in there, and after that we called them out. And even then they only came out reluctantly.”
From his home in the church rectory, Rev. Henry Dahl first realized something was amiss when his electricity began surging around 6 a.m. Assuming the weather could be causing a power outage, Dahl had just gotten into the shower when he heard the phone ring and the church fire alarm sound simultaneously. From his window, he could see smoke rising from the roof of the church, and he rushed outside to meet Trovato, who had just arrived. In the course of the next hour, fire departments from Truro, Wellfleet, Eastham, Orleans and other Cape towns began arriving to help battle the increasingly raging blaze. Around 8 a.m., less than 30 minutes after the fire reached the church attic, the roof began to cave in, Trovato said. Shortly afterward, the steeple collapsed inward, sending a shower of flame and ash into the sky, which onlookers described as already thick with black smoke.
Among those who gathered on Prince Street to witness the fire and lend support were Town Manager Keith Bergman and his wife Margaret, who first began attending St. Peter’s three years ago, and Selectman Mary-Jo Avellar, who attended the church from childhood.
“It’s heartbreaking. So much of the history of the town, especially the Portuguese history, is tied up with St. Peter’s. So it’s a huge blow,” said Avellar, who recalls attending children’s Mass at the church each week, where girls sat on one side of the aisle and boys on the other, and fondly remembers longtime parish priest Father Leo Duart. “My father was buried from that church. My grandmother was buried from that church. It’s a terrible loss.”
Volunteer firefighters, many of whom are St. Peter’s parishioners, managed to carry out the church tabernacle, vessels, vestments, a number of historic documents, a Mary Hackett painting and statuettes of St. Peter and the Holy Family before they could be damaged by the fire. Most of the church’s stained glass windows were destroyed, as well as a large mural of St. Peter painted in 1968 by Truro artist Eugene Sparks. The church had recently undergone several renovations, including a roof replacement, and was about to be repainted.
“We are all still in shock,” Dahl said, standing in the parish hall adjacent to the church, where a Mass will be held at 4 p.m. on Saturday. “Most of our parishioners had parents and grandparents and great-grandparents who were baptized and married and died here. The roots run very deep.”
Dahl, who has been at St. Peter’s for two and a half years, has received calls from Diocese of Fall River Bishop George Coleman, who plans to visit the congregation, and from other local churches offering support.
More than 80 fire and rescue personnel from around the lower and mid-Cape lent support in the disaster, which would have been virtually impossible to control had the fire begun closer to the weekend’s snowstorm, when roads remained impassable for hours. Local volunteers banded together with Provincetown rescue workers to provide food and other support for the firefighters, who remained at the scene throughout the day. Around 25 firefighters were served lunch at the Soup Kitchen in Provincetown, according to kitchen coordinator Sandy Fay, where extra sandwiches had been made in anticipation of a larger-than-usual lunchtime crowd.
Television crews and news reporters from CBS, Fox, several cable networks and newspapers throughout the region gathered in the church parking lot to provide coverage of the fire, which Trovato likened in severity to the three-alarm fire that destroyed Provincetown’s Maushope elderly housing complex on November 14, 1996.
Dahl plans on continuing to hold regular Mass in the parish hall until a decision can be made by the parish council about how to rebuild or replace the well-loved church.
“I used to wake up every morning and look at that church and think how terrible it would be if there were a fire. This was always one of my biggest fears,” Dahl said, standing in front of the rescued statue of St. Peter in a corner of the parish hall. “But as one of our parishioners said today, it’s a building — and we’re a community of faith.”
|
Blizzard buries town
In the News
|
|
|
|
|
Jan 27th, 2005