Congregation 'devastated' after fire wrecks Anglican Lutheran church in Manitoba town

CBC

· Posted: Mar 13, 2025 6:26 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 minutes ago

A congregation successful Carman, Man., is coming to grips with the nonaccomplishment of their Anglican Lutheran church, a fixture successful the assemblage that was ravaged by a occurrence connected Thursday. 

Crews from the Carman Dufferin Fire Department were dispatched astatine astir 4:10 a.m. pursuing reports of a occurrence successful the Grace-St. John's Anglican Lutheran Church successful Carman, roughly 75 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg. 

Deputy Chief Joey McElroy told CBC astir 75 per cent of the building's interior was compromised during the blaze. 

"The congregation is precise devastated, they're precise upset and they were sorrowful astir [it]," Rev. Trudy Thorarinson, the church's pastor, said connected Thursday. 

Thorarinson said the church, built successful 1965, is the lone Anglican Lutheran successful the confederate Manitoba municipality with a congregation of astir 30 families.

"[The fire] is truthful caller and it truthful happens truthful quickly, close present we're inactive conscionable trying to travel to grasp," Thorarinson said. 

No injuries reported

McElroy said 5 pieces of instrumentality and 18 unit members battled the blaze. 

Firefighters tried to participate the religion but rapidly realized the level successful the beforehand portion of the religion was missing, truthful they fought the occurrence from the extracurricular of the building, McElroy said.

Crews past went wrong the gathering to measure the grade of damage, extinguishing hotspots wherever the occurrence had spread. The occurrence was deemed nether power by astir 6 a.m.

"[It] took a small portion to get successful determination and fig retired wherever precisely it was burning, arsenic it had dispersed to truthful galore parts of the church," McElroy said.  "Anytime you're successful a tiny assemblage and you suffer a church, that decidedly has a large effect connected the community." 

The gathering was bare astatine the clip of the fire, and nary firefighter was was injured.

Two unit members stay connected the country to guarantee nary hotspots flare up again during the afternoon, McElroy said.

The Office of Fire Commissioner is moving to find the origin of the fire, McElroy said. 

When the probe is completed, the gathering volition beryllium turned backmost to the church's committee of directors, McElroy said, allowing them to proceed with security claims. 

Since the fire, the religion has received an outpouring of enactment from wrong and extracurricular the congregation, Thorarinson said. 

Besides worship services, Grace-St. John's has worked on with different churches successful Carman connected assemblage outreach initiatives specified as food hampers for the needy. 

Thorarinson said the congregation has been offered alternate spaces to worship until the religion is repaired.

"We're inactive going to stitchery arsenic a worshipping assemblage connected Sunday, it conscionable won't beryllium successful the abstraction we usually meet, but we volition inactive stitchery due to the fact that the religion is not the building," Thorarinson said.

With the religion being a blend betwixt the Anglican and Lutheran churches for the past decades, Jason Zinko, bishop of the Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church successful Canada, said Grace-St. John's has ties with Carman's assemblage astatine large.

However, with the outreach enactment extracurricular the church, helium said the interaction of the occurrence is going to beryllium felt extracurricular the congregation arsenic well. 

"A batch of our churches, particularly successful smaller communities, are truly important to the beingness that happens wrong the community," Zinko said. 

"I tin ideate that they are feeling a consciousness of loss," helium said. "This is going to beryllium a nonaccomplishment that galore radical feel."