Fire at historic Mission church educational building was accident, investigators say
A fire that severely damaged an educational building at the historic First Baptist Church of Mission has been ruled an accident by investigators, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Friday.
“It was not a set fire, we know that for certain,” said John Ham, a spokesman for the ATF in Kansas City. “It is suspected that it was electrical in nature, but we will have to continue some of our investigative work.”
Because the fire has been ruled an accident, there will be no criminal investigation, Ham said. Investigators were finished at the scene and have released the building back to church.
The building at 5641 Outlook St. was unoccupied by the time the first crews arrived Thursday and no one was hurt in the blaze. The building, however, was considered a “total loss” by fire officials.
Pastor Larry Scupham said he wasn’t surprised by the ATF’s findings.
“That’s what we figured they would come up with,” he said as he stood in the main church building Friday afternoon. The main building suffered smoke damage on the second floor and water damage on the first floor.
“We’re a close family and we’re going to stick together and we’ll make it through this,” Scupham said. “We’re going to have to relocate to some place here for a little while, but we’ll come through this.”
Flames shoot through roof
The fire was reported just before 5:30 p.m. Thursday. Arriving firefighters reported seeing flames and smoke pouring from the building’s roof.
“When we got there, this fire was well underway,” Deputy Chief of Operations Steve Chick, with the Consolidated Fire District 2 in Johnson County, said Friday. “It appeared to be an attic fire when we got there.”
The pastor learned of the fire when the church’s treasurer called around 5:25 p.m. He quickly arrived at the scene and saw smoke coming out of one of the vents of the north building. That building once housed Sunday school classrooms but hadn’t been in use for several years.
At first, the fire didn’t look too serious.
“Then after being there a few minutes, all of a sudden, the whole thing was ablaze and then my heart sunk in,” Scupham said.
When the fire burned through the roof, it got enough oxygen to continue to grow, Chick said. Part of the roof eventually collapsed.
“We were able to get a handle on it once we got crews in place and we’re able to use our aerials and a few other tactics to try and bring it under control,” Chick said.
Because the fire was in the attic, it was unsafe for crews to mount an interior attack and could only fight the flames from above using the aerial ladders on the fire trucks.
Approximately 40 firefighters and emergency medical personnel from the Consolidated Fire District, Overland Park and Shawnee fire departments and Johnson County Med-Act fought to save the building and to keep it from spreading south to the church’s main building.
“We were able to stop it from progressing to the south building which is a big big plus because the sanctuary has big timber like a lot of churches and a lot of wood in there,” he said. “Fortunately we were able to stop it so that it didn’t consume that large building as well.”
Thick heavy smoke blanked fire scene
Besides the location of where the fire started, another challenge was that smoke from the fire wasn’t lifting away from the fire scene, Chick said.
“The smoke was laying down on the ground,” Chick said.
That meant firefighters and others who were not on the front lines but were working around the scene had to wear air packs. Neighbors also had to be kept back to make sure “they were not in a direct line of smoke growing on them.”
“It was a challenge,” he said.
Because the church building was an older structure, it didn’t have any fire alarm or sprinkler systems.
“We’re big on alarm systems and sprinklers because it alerts us even more quickly,” Chick said. “When we got there, this fire was well under way.”
Investigators from the ATF and Kansas Fire Marshal’s office arrived Friday morning and pored over the charred remains of the building. After entering the building, they focused their investigation on the area with the most fire damage, said Ham, the ATF spokesman.
People shouldn’t assume that when the ATF joins in an investigation that a criminal act has occurred, Ham said. That is not necessarily the case, but it is always a possibility going into an investigation.
“There is a congressional mandate that the ATF to investigate fires at houses of worship,” Ham said.
The church has about 50 members and several stopped by Friday to survey the damage and lend support.
“In one aspect, it’s been devastating. I’ve been here 20 years, just finished 20 years last fall, so it’s part of my life,” Pastor Scupham said. “But it’s just a building. Nobody got hurt.”
This story was originally published March 5, 2021 at 3:29 PM.
