CHRISTMAS EVE mass is to proceed at St Mary’s Church in Ruan, two days after the timber spire of the building was struck by lightning and caught fire.
Electrical damage was sustained to the building but light and heat has been provided which will allow Christmas Eve mass to take place at St Mary’s Church at 8pm on Christmas Eve.
St Mary’s Church in Ruan saw its timber spire go on fire and crash to the ground after a lightning strike shortly before 4am on Sunday morning. It is the first time the church has been hit by lightning.
Parishioners have been informed that Christmas Eve mass will go ahead as scheduled at 8pm.
Fr Pat O’Neill, parish priest of Ruan and Dysart who lives opposite the church said everyone in the locality is “doing well” following the shock of the lightning strike which also caused extensive damage to a property in Dromore.
He outlined, “the lightning struck the steeple which went on fire, there was a good breeze so it lit the timber very quickly and fell. We had rebuilt the steeple, originally it was on a timber octagonal shape but a number of years ago in 2011, the timbers were rotting at the bottom so we put up a steel structure and placed the steeple on top of that, that steel platform I think saved the day, we were lucky the steeple didn’t fall on the church and if the steeple had fallen on the church everything would have been gone, we were very lucky”.
Ruan village was saved by the church, Fr O’Neill believed. “In the last couple of weeks I had a man here who had a look at the lightning rods on the church, there is nine separate copper lightning strips and I feel that we were very fortunate in so many ways because maybe the church being hit could have saved an awful lot of houses or the village”.
An alarm was raised by locals with emergency services attending to the scene in under twenty minutes. “What actually happened, there was a lad from the locality coming home in a car, he saw the fire, it was just beginning, he alerted some local people, their kids were worried, the bang was so loud that it frightened them and they got up to see what was happening, they saw the church beginning to light, some of those lads came over and they banged on the door and said ‘the church is on fire, the church is on fire’ so I went out, it was just beginning at that stage but the whole thing began to light very quickly”.
On his feeling at the time, Fr O’Neill admitted, “You’d have had a fear that the whole church would go, there was a gas tank which hadn’t been filled, we use a gas tank for the heating, it is nearby and when the fire brigade came they spent a lot of time dousing down the tank to keep it cool and that nothing would happen there, I must say the fire brigade in jig time, they were here in about seventeen minutes or thereabouts from the time they were called, they were excellent, they had a great degree of confidence, they did their work very well, they served us very well”.
Electrical work needs to be completed in the church as a result of the strike. “The difficulty is we have no electricity or heating in the church, all of the electrics will have to be redone, the fuse that the ESB would have was blown out of the wall, the fuse board was blown out of the wall, all of the electrics will have to be seen to and certified as safe and right before the ESB can connect us up”.
On the response from locals, he said, “It was like a swarm of bees, so many locals came to help clean up the place, to take away the burnt pieces, the place was cleaned up in jig time, you could see the faith that people have and you would have to be impressed by them”.
