Investigators Say Fire That Gutted Church in Poway Looks Accidental

As investigators probed the ashes of gutted St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Poway, priests celebrated Mass at the nearby meeting hall Thursday morning.

Sgt. Conrad Grayson, a sheriff’s arson investigator, said a preliminary search of the church building on Pomerado Road “has us leaning toward seeing it as an accidental fire, not an incendiary arson fire.”

Three teams of arson investigators continued to probe the fire, which caused more than $2 million in damage to the 800-seat sanctuary early Wednesday morning.

“We probably will never be able to pinpoint the cause,” Grayson said, “because the fire destroyed so much of the evidence.”

The fire began high in the southwest area of the church, and such height “is inconsistent with the work of an arsonist,” he said. The fire could have smoldered for hours, even overnight, building up heat and pressure inside the building. It blew out windows and walls shortly after 7 a.m. Wednesday.

When the glass skylight that allowed natural light to shine on the altar exploded in the intense heat, “it acted like a funnel,” accelerating the spread of the fire and allowing it to feed on itself, no matter how much water was poured on the flames, Grayson explained.

The church’s electrical system appeared to be functioning normally, with no signs of a short, “although we are not ruling anything out yet,” the investigator said. The super-heated blaze destroyed evidence that might have pointed to the cause, including paint and materials being used by a crew renovating the interior of the sanctuary.

Grayson said that, shortly after arson investigators were called in, he called for a dragnet in the Poway area to locate an arsonist implicated in nine church fires about five or six years ago.

The man, who was released in 1986 from a mental institution where he was sent after being found guilty of a San Marcos church fire in 1985, was located in San Diego on Thursday. He was questioned and released, Grayson said.

The Rev. Joseph Marmion, an associate pastor at St. Michael’s, said many of its 2,100 parishioners have called or visited the parish offices to offer help in beginning the rebuilding.

“We were much relieved that the investigators do not think it was arson,” Marmion said. He said priests had recovered their undamaged chalices from cupboards in the sacristy that were hardly scorched, but the steel tabernacle containing the consecrated wafers used during Communion “was crushed like a cardboard carton.”

Priests’ vestments were also consumed, he said, and the marble altar was cracked by a falling beam.

Church officials said the building was insured through the federally chartered Catholic Mutual Aid Society and will be rebuilt. Marmion said additional funds will be needed to replace items such as the $50,000 air-conditioning system recently installed.

However, he stressed that “services will go on as usual” in the nearby social hall, which holds 400 to 500 people. The four Sunday Masses “may be expanded to five if we find it is too tight a fit” on the current schedule, he said. Neighboring Catholic parishes have also offered their facilities for St. Michael’s use.

One woman called and asked in a panicked voice if her upcoming wedding would still be held, Marmion said, “and I told her that we would hold it in the social hall here or at one of the other churches, St. Gabriel’s or St. Raphael’s.”

Marmion said that newly installed San Diego Bishop Robert Brom visited St. Michael’s on Wednesday and stared in shocked silence at the rubble that had once been a church.

“The first question that the bishop asked was, ‘How are the people?’ ” he said.