Pastor Scott Distler of the Grace Brethren Church of Lititz, PA, gave the following fire-incident report today in his regular e-mail update to his congregation:
We did have some excitement of a different kind at the church Wednesday evening.
About 10 minutes prior to the Wednesday evening ministries beginning, the alarms went off inside the building. Usually, alarms going off means that we are having another safety drill or that there has been some type of system malfunction.
However, last night the cause was due to a small fire in a large garbage can down in the Tech Ed room of the school.
Jay Hall, who is our Maintenance Director here at Grace, was here at the time and was able to quickly read the alarm panel, find the fire and put it out with a dry chemical fire extinguisher. Due to the smoke and smell that lingered in the building afterwards, we had to cancel all regular Wednesday ministries.
The fire company did respond and help to decipher that the building was safe to return into and a restoration company was called in to ensure that the Tech Ed and all other rooms would be ready to go for school on Thursday.
The fire chief commended us on our response to the incident in the fact that are alarms worked properly; we were able to get everyone cleared out of the building; and he highly commended Jay Hall for his quick action in containing the fire.
We praise the Lord for His safety and watchful eye over our ministry and for the lessons we have learned that will make our facility and our ministry even safer.
