Fire causes significant damage to Mount Olive Baptist Church

Lynsey Smith
·2 min read

MARSHALL COUNTY, Ala. (WHNT)— A Marshall County church is shut down after a fire broke out Tuesday afternoon. The pastor of this church tells News 19 that he was in disbelief when he received the call about the fire.

“I tried to rush and get that way. When I got there, the church was smoking,” Mount Olive Baptist Church Pastor Joey Bowman stated. “I’m still in disbelief and kind of found a place to slip away and pray and just kind of see how we’re going to rebuild and what we’re going to do.”

Fire breaks out at Mt.Olive Baptist Church in Albertville

Guntersville fire officials say the fire broke out at Mount Olive Baptist around 1:30 Tuesday afternoon. The church, which sustained significant damage, was thankfully unoccupied at the time of the fire.

“We’ve got the power killed to it. We’ve got it roped off, so they’re not allowed to use it until the cleanup has taken place,” Guntersville Fire Department Fire Marshal Matt Lang said. “It’s going to be tough to clean it up.”

Lang says they were on the scene assisting the Pleasant Grove Volunteer Fire Department to put out the flames.

“For the amount of smoke that we experienced with as little fire as what we had of course there was a lot of fire once we got in there, but it was really contained to the back of the building…but the smoke was all the way throughout the building,” Lang said.

No injuries, 5 displaced after fire in Northwest Huntsville

Pastor Bowman says the church has received a lot of support from the community. As for when they’ll be able to get back into the building, the future remains uncertain.

“We’re trying to get power to our fellowship hall right now, and we have a pretty good-sized fellowship hall,” Bowman stated. “If we can get that going, we plan to have services there for a little while until we can see whether we’re going to have to rebuild or what we’re going to have to do.”

ATF, State Fire Marshals’, and the Marshall County Task Force are all working to find out what started the fire.

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