Editor’s note: This story by Liz Sauchelli was originally published in the Valley News on March 29.
Yoga instructor Lisa Gleeson was nearing the end of a Monday evening class in the basement of the Perkinsville Community Church when she and her students heard a loud noise.
“It started as a smaller rumbling, and it sounded kind of like a thunderstorm or a truck driving by,” Gleeson recalled in a phone interview Tuesday morning. “Then it sounded like somebody was hurling pianos across the room upstairs.”
Then one of her students saw the ceiling tiles overhead begin to shake.
“We all locked eyes with each other and said we need to get out and fast,” Gleeson said. “As soon as you heard the sound you knew it was destructive. You knew that it was not a good thing.”
They exited the room as the smoke alarm went off and called the fire department.
West Weathersfield Fire Chief Joshua Dauphin was the first to arrive at the scene in the center of Perkinsville. Upon inspection, Dauphin found the ceiling above the church’s sanctuary had collapsed. No one was in that part of the building and no one was injured. The roof itself is still intact.
“(We’re) lucky it wasn’t a Sunday or it was being occupied upstairs. It would be a different situation,” Dauphin said on Tuesday. “There’s still a quarter of the ceiling that’s still partially hanging so it’s obviously deemed unsafe.”
Emergency responders were on the scene for about two hours and set up a perimeter around the church to keep people away from the structure. The cause of the collapse remains unknown. The church’s board of trustees is working with its insurance company and an engineer to figure out the next steps.
“Until they are able to get the building shored up it’s really unsafe to go in there and see what the cause might’ve been,” Dauphin said.
The Perkinsville Community Church was originally built in 1832. It burned down a century later and was rebuilt in 1932, according to Gloria Ballantine, the church’s head trustee. While regular church services are no longer held, the building is a community gathering spot.
Gleesen held yoga classes there two days a week and an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting took place there once a week. There also are monthly potluck meals. Weddings and funerals also regularly took place.
“It’s really the only building in the village area that’s available for use, committees or any type of meeting,” Ballantine said.
Ballantine estimated that the sanctuary’s ceiling is around 30 feet high and the room itself around 50 square feet. The church’s roof was replaced around 20 years ago.
“It’s just a strange situation. When a ceiling comes down, you think, ‘Oh, it must’ve been a leak.’ There’s no leak,” Ballantine said. “It just came down, so now we have to wait to see what the insurance company says and all those people that have to be involved in that sort of thing.”
The ultimate goal is to repair and reopen the space, but it is too soon to estimate a time frame, Ballantine said.
“There’s a lot of things that are going to go into it,” she said. “Unfortunately, it won’t be for a while.”
While church ceiling collapses are uncommon, they’re not unheard of in the Upper Valley. In May 2007, the plaster sanctuary ceiling at the Orford (New Hampshire) Congregational Church collapsed; and in 1992, there was a similar ceiling collapse at the First Congregational Church in Woodstock, according to Valley News archives.
In Perkinsville, there is gratitude that no one was injured and hope that the church can be returned to a community gathering spot soon.
Gleeson said the community room’s windows allowed for natural light and its central location made it a good gathering spot to hold classes. She has moved her classes online for the time being.
“Seeing the destruction that happened to the church was obviously really moving and sad, but I was also grateful that we were able to get out and that there was no service being held upstairs when it happened,” she said. “I hope that they can make it back to what it was because I think there’s a lot of people who have special memories of weddings, baptisms, everything that goes on in church.”
