May 18, 2006 Taganrog, Rostov, Russia …. [Vlad Arhipov/ANN Staff]
A suspicious fire on April 28 caused heavy damage to the Number 1 Seventh-day Adventist Church in the city of Tanganrog, Rostov, Russia, church officials confirmed.
According to Pastor Michael Oleinik, he discovered the fire on that Friday morning: “Approaching the building, I felt a smell of burning. I hastened to open a door, and there was a thick fog of caustic smoke.”
Oleinik entered through the building, and upon going upstairs discovered the slow-burning, but dangerous, fire.
Apparently, Oleinik said, “the [arsonist] broke a window in a basement of [the] church building and entered. In a hall where we usually hold our services, he gathered benches and poured a gas mixture over it and set fire.”
“The fire could [have] caused enormous damage, but by a miracle the fire died out and fortunately didn't inflame,” he continued. “Some benches and the parquet floor are burned out. The fire damaged nothing else. But the walls and a ceiling of [the] church building are under a rich layer of soot.”
Church members have devoted several days of volunteer labor to cleaning and restoring the church, Oleinik said.
There was perhaps a warning about the arson. About 10 days earlier, Oleinik said, “an unknown malefactor broke the windows” of the church. Media reports indicated that police had dismissed the attack as “hooliganism.”
Copyright (c) 2006 by Adventist News Network. web site: news.adventist.org
