POTTSTOWN — It may be at least two weeks before officials can determine the cause of the blaze that destroyed a historic church Friday.
Pottstown Fire Chief Frank Hand told MediaNews Group the investigation is just beginning and it will take time, particularly because of the amount of debris on the site in the wake of the decision to tear most of the building down in order to prevent any injury or property damage.
“We think we know the area where it started, but it will take a while to get in there and have a look,” Hand said.
Completed in 1861 and formerly known as Transfiguration Lutheran Church, the building was later owned by Invictus Ministries Inc.
According to Montgomery County property records, the 7,000-square-foot lot is owned by Lastick Acquisitions LLC. It was purchased from Invictus Ministries Inc. in April of 2024 for $337,500.
There had been talk of the church being converted into apartments, but it is unknown if any formal submission for that project to move forward has been made to the borough.
The borough is still reeling from the impact of the inferno, which consumed the church, most recently operated by Invictus Ministries Inc. The fire started early Friday before dawn, and although fire companies were on the scene just three minutes after the first alarm, the fire was already too far advanced for the firefighters to do anything but try to contain it to the single building.
About 50 people were evacuated from the area as a precaution, and at least 25 homes were without electricity, Hand said. Many more were without internet service.
Although the fire was eventually tamped down, the building continued to smoke into the afternoon. Ultimately, the clock tower, which was still standing despite the fact that the roof was gone, collapsed after 12 p.m.
Hand said the brass bell, which hung in the tower, “is still intact. It’s in there. We’ve seen the bell.”
But as it stands as of Monday, “we can’t really get into the building right now. There is a lot of debris, and it’s hard to walk on. Also, there is still a lot of water in there as well.”
Hand said he is aware that there is a lot of talk that the fire may have been caused by people breaking into the church for shelter. “I’ve started investigating and looking at police reports about things that have happened there, but I can’t be biased. We’re not even close to saying what caused it,” he said.
“I have to eliminate possibilities. Was it a gas leak? Was it caused by an electrical problem? Were there carpenters working in there?” said Hand. “It’s a whole process, and where this investigation ends up will depend on where the facts take us,” he said. “We need to be meticulous and thorough.”
Hand said the decision to demolish what remained of the building after the fire was extinguished was made after the site was examined by a structural engineer from Urban Search and Rescue, an arm of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA.
“One of the walls was leaning very badly with the roof no longer there to support it, and we didn’t want it falling down on someone’s house or on the street,” Hand said.
He had praise for the support systems that sprang up at such an event.
The Red Cross set up a shelter at Trinity Reformed Church, just a block away, which ended up housing three adults and one child overnight. And Goodwill Ambulance helped with an impact not always obvious to those who have not been through such an incident.
“A couple hours after we evacuated everybody, some people started coming up to us saying they needed their medicine, which they did not take with them when we asked them to leave. We couldn’t let them back in their homes yet, but the folks at Goodwill were very good at listening to where the medicine was in their house and bringing it to them,” Hand said.
“There are just so many moving parts to a situation like this, a lot of people don’t realize it,” he said.
What many people are realizing, said Hand, is the greater impact the fire has had on people’s memories.
“I mean, the town lost a beautiful historic building, which is very sad, but (Goodwill Chief) Kevin Yerger and I were in a vehicle Friday trying to get warm, and we started talking about how many weddings, funerals and baptisms had occurred there,” Hand said. “That kind of loss is harder to measure.”
