LYNNWOOD – A fire that extensively damaged a church sanctuary here on Tuesday was deliberately set, police said Wednesday.
The fire at Maple Park Lutheran Brethren Church, 17620 60th Ave. W., started about 6 p.m. in a portable toilet outside the north church wall, officials said. No one was injured.
“It was not a natural fire,” Lynnwood police Sgt. Jerry Riener said.
Riener was with fire investigators at the scene Tuesday night when the determination was made, he said. No suspects have been identified, Riener said.
Damage is estimated at $200,000. The congregation will meet in its adjacent fellowship hall until the sanctuary is repaired, church administrator Carol Miller said.
“We’ll make do,” she said. “We’re very lucky the building isn’t gone.” Miller credited firefighters for quickly dousing the flames.
Miller said she’s not angry about the fire.
“Just disappointed,” she said. “Really disappointed.”
The fire reduced the toilet to a plastic pancake and twisted and partly melted another portable toilet nearby. Flames charred the outside wall and part of the roof and reached inside through windows to singe part of the sanctuary’s arched wooden ceiling.
Fabric on chairs was melted, and the sanctuary suffered extensive smoke damage.
Some support beams were cracked, and the entire wall will probably have to be rebuilt, said Kurt Miller, chairman of the church’s trustee board and Carol’s husband.
“It’s a whole lot worse than we thought it was,” he said.
The ceiling is tongue-and-groove knotty pine and will likely have to be entirely replaced so all the wood will match, Kurt Miller said.
The work is expected to take three to five months. The fellowship hall is just big enough to hold the congregation of 250 to 350, Carol Miller said.
The solution might not be as simple for the Slavic Church of Sulamita, an evangelical group that leases the Maple Park church on Sunday afternoons. The group draws overflow crowds every week, and the fellowship hall won’t be big enough for all of them, Kurt Miller said.
The group is remodeling a warehouse in Mukilteo for its permanent home, he said. The pastor for the Slavic Church of Sulamita could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Three weddings are planned for the Maple Park sanctuary in the next month-and-a-half.
Kurt Miller and other trustees arrived for a 7 p.m. meeting Tuesday to find several fire trucks in the parking lot, he said.
It’s believed no church members were on the property when the fire started. Church pastor David Overland was fishing in Alaska, and other members were on a mission trip to Panama, church members said.
The church was remodeling a section between the sanctuary and the fellowship hall, which was why portable toilets had been rented.
“It’s kind of interesting we had this with the building project going on at the same time,” Sunday school teacher Sandy Erickson said. “Now we have to do more.”
Herald reporter Jim Haley contributed to this report.
Reporter Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439 or sheets@heraldnet.com.
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