Fire Destroys Church Under Construction

The Rev. Laws Weetly usually rises early. But he wasn’t prepared for the 5:15 a.m. wake-up call he got Sunday.

Half asleep, Weetly listened in disbelief as a member of his congregation frantically informed him that their beloved Westlake area church, close to completion after two years of construction, was ablaze.

Weetly said he quickly drove over to the Church of God of Prophecy at 1519 S. Hoover St., all the while thinking that there must be a mistake. There was nothing in the church that would ignite a fire--no lights, no gas, nothing. It must be one of the neighboring houses, he thought. He was wrong.

Forty Los Angeles firefighters responded to battle the blaze while residents in the surrounding apartment buildings were evacuated until the fire was extinguished.

The cause of the fire, which did an estimated $550,000 in damage, was under investigation, Fire Department spokesman Greg Acevedo said.

It had taken two years of tamale sales, pledges, donations and virtual penny-pinching by the 120 members of the Spanish-speaking church to raise the money needed to build the 4,000-square-foot modern white stucco building, Weetly said.

Word about the fire spread quickly. And by mid-morning most of the congregation had flocked to the church. Assorted doughnuts and large jugs of orange juice lay untouched on a picnic bench in the back of the lot.

“Look. They are all torn apart,” Weetly said scanning the gloomy faces of his parishioners. “They worked so to raise the money.

“I am convinced it had to be somebody that did this,” the minister said. “What type of person though, I don’t know.”

Even though the wood framing was exposed and there was no dry-wall, the church members were so eager that they had begun assembling inside in the last few weeks, Weetly said.

“I was crying when they told me what happened,” said Bertha Guevarra, the captain in charge of church bake sales. “But we did it and now we’ll work even harder.”

The church is covered by insurance and will be rebuilt. Meantime, Weetly said, the congregation will probably hold services in a shack at the back of the lot.

“I guess we’ll have a meeting and decide what to do, but not today,” he said. “We’re not in shape to do anything today.”