Fire Devastates Breezy’s St. Edmund Church on Holy Saturday

By Katie McFadden

Bookended by the death of Pope Francis on Easter Monday, the holiest weekend of the year was even more tragic for Catholics living in Breezy Point. On Saturday afternoon, April 19, an electrical fire broke out in Saint Edmund Church on Rockaway Point Boulevard in Breezy Point, destroying a significant portion of the building ahead of Easter Sunday. But as with any hardship facing the tight-knit community, from 9/11 to Hurricane Sandy to Covid, as Blessed Trinity Parish pastor Father Michael Gelfant says, “We get through it.”

From baptisms to weddings to Sunday services, Catholic education classes and a go-to for the summer crowd in Breezy when moving cars to go to St. Thomas More becomes a challenge, St. Edmund Church has been a staple in the private community since 1937. On Saturday morning, church staff were putting finishing touches on decorations for the next day’s Easter service. But by Saturday afternoon, St. Edmund was attended by 144 firefighters from 33 FDNY units and the Point Breeze and Rockaway Point Volunteer fire departments within the community.

Just before 2 p.m. on Saturday, a 911 call was made regarding a fire in the roof of the church. Within a short time, the wooden building was engulfed in a three-alarm fire. By 3:30 p.m., the fire was under control, but the damage had been done.

“The damage is pretty significant, for not only the church, but the religious education school attached. There were seven classrooms attached to it, so everything is pretty much destroyed,” Fr. Gelfant told The Rockaway Times on Tuesday. “The sanctuary where the altar is needs to be completely gutted, or at least, whatever is left. The rest of the church had smoke and water damage. Structurally, we don’t know the condition of the building. We have engineers coming in, so we’ll get an assessment of what needs to be done to stabilize where the fire happened and make sure the roof doesn’t collapse.”

Fr. Gelfant says investigators determined that the cause was an electrical fire. But that doesn’t come as a surprise. “We keep having this problem,” Fr. Gelfant said. “A lot of the electrical conduits are in the ground or close to the ground and this is the damage that we keep attributing to Hurricane Sandy because these things were under saltwater. This would be the fifth time we’ve had a problem with this. Usually someone catches it when the wires start to arc and the circuit breaker goes out, but this was in the wall, so it wasn’t noticeable and it was on the main line, therefore no circuit breaker.”

Fr. Gelfant admires the efforts made to put out the blaze. “I went flying down there and Rockaway Point Volunteer Fire Department was there, Point Breeze was on scene and then the FDNY showed up. The response from the vollies was heroic. The response from the FDNY was amazing. I don’t think we could’ve gotten more fire trucks in that spot. There were a lot of off duty and retired FDNY there pulling hoses and just doing whatever they knew how to do. We could’ve lost the whole building with how quickly it went up, but without the volunteers and the FDNY, we could’ve lost a lot more,” Fr. Gelfant said.

But once he was able to get inside, Fr. Gelfant was able to see the extent of the damage, especially to the altar and school. “The altar is gone. The piano is gone. We have one statue, of the Sacred Heart, that did not get touched. St. Joseph, we can’t find him. The crucifix was destroyed. It was five feet from the Blessed Mother. That’s scorched. But most of the pews can be saved, they can be refinished,” he said.

As Easter Sunday approached, services for St. Edmund were redirected to St. Thomas More within Blessed Trinity Parish. And with it came some pieces of home. “For Easter Mass, we wanted to make a connection, so we had the Blessed Mother statue from the outside sanctuary and the altar stone there. I think people like knowing what happened to their things,” Fr. Gelfant said.

The irony of such a tragedy occurring on Easter weekend is not lost on Fr. Gelfant, but he reminds parishioners to stay hopeful. “I don’t think God is teaching us a lesson, but we’re coming out of 40 days of Lent, that time of reflecting on our sinful nature, and now this happened. But even though we’re experiencing this, we’re not putting Jesus back into the tomb. On Easter, we celebrate the resurrection. This means we don’t put the darkness back because He is the light and He’s already here,” he said. “That’s our goal. We’re moving forward. We can be depressed about everything but that would be putting yourself back into Lent.”

Despite the shock of the situation, Fr. Gelfant is leading by example. While neighbors surveyed the damage of the fire on Saturday evening, within two days, there wasn’t much to see. “We cleared the building of debris, and we have a construction fence up. On Saturday afternoon people were seeing the charred sidewalks, debris on the side of the church and the broken stained-glass windows, so when crews got there, I said, I need all of this stuff removed. Just put it in the back, I don’t want anyone to see anything,” Fr. Gelfant said. “It’s shocking enough to see the church burned out.”

As for the future of the church, Fr. Gelfant says it’s not up to him. Bishop Robert Brennan, leader of the Diocese of Brooklyn, will make the final decision. “My hope would be to repair the church, but we’re waiting to see what the bishop wants to do,” Fr. Gelfant said. Engineers have also been on site to help them determine what can be done. And they’ll likely have the finances to make repairs. “My anticipation is that insurance will cover most, if not all,” he said.

In the meantime, the surrounding community is also rallying to show support. “During Easter service, Christ Community Church took a collection and gave it towards this rebuild, which was really important to us, and I just received a message from Paul King of the Belle Harbor Property Owners Association who said his civic, Neponsit, Rockaway Park and Rockaway Beach civics are raising funds for us,” he said. “We’ve also received a lot of prayerful support and others have sent donations.” Meanwhile, services have been redirected. All St. Edmund Masses will be moved to St. Thomas More for the time being, and the religious education classes will resume in various community meeting spaces across Breezy and Rockaway Point.

Fr. Gelfant also hopes that folks give back to those who helped the most. “We’re really thankful for our volunteer firefighters and they keep telling us they need volunteers. This in an invaluable service, so hopefully people will consider signing up to become a volunteer,” Fr. Gelfant said. “A third of the building might be gone but we would’ve lost the entire building without them.”

 Photo by Edward Morgan.