The Church is On Fire?!

Here’s how everything went down…

At around 2:30 PM this afternoon, I was transferred to a call from Black Watch Security about a fire alarm on our property. As no alarms were going off in the office facility, I ran to the sanctuary immediately to assess the situation. As soon as I walked out of the door of the office complex, I could hear the sirens and see the emergency lights going off in the warehouse buildings.

I cautiously entered and saw that there appeared to be nothing happening in the sanctuary, youth room, or nursery areas. That led me to the children’s ministry area, where upon opening the door, I heard what could only be described as a “cackling fire sound.” Seriously! That’s what it sounded like. I couldn’t see anything upon first inspection, but when I turned on the lights, I could see puddles of water forming under two water sprinkler heads. Yikes! I ran outside to meet the Rapid City Fire Department at the front doors and escorted them to the problem area.

I was thoroughly impressed with their service and quickness in assessing and controlling the situation. As soon as they saw the water, a couple of the firefighters started grabbing garbage cans and buckets to catch the water, one went with me to shut off the emergency water valve. Still, a few others helped me move Pastor Dy’s stuff out of harm’s way, both in her storage room and the larger ministry room. Very impressed…

Shortly after, Linda H. and Cheryl C. showed up and started helping move even more stuff out of the way: chairs, more boxes of Dy’s children’s ministry stuff, the puppet stage, etc. I was very thankful for the extra help!

I had a 3:00 PM appointment at the office, so I left and returned to piles of the ceiling falling into pieces on the ground at about 4:00 PM. By that time, a crowd of contractors had arrived and were helping to clean up already. The early prognostication is that what started it all was a failed water sprinkler head. Ugh!

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