SAN ANTONIO – A fire that broke out early Friday morning inside a storage room on the grounds of a Southeast Side church has taken a toll on a local Boy Scout troop.
The storage room, behind St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church’s Gevers Hall, is where Troop 177 stored most of its camping gear.
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San Antonio firefighters responded to the scene, in the 1000 block of Ada Street, around 4:30 a.m.
Initially, they had trouble finding the source of the fire, which had thick black smoke pouring out of the vents of the building, which serves as a meeting hall.
They said eventually, they realized the fire was inside the storage room and put it out.
Gerardo Mechler, the scout leader and a deacon at the church, found out about the situation later in a series of phone calls, then rushed to the scene to see the damage for himself.
“We’ve lost tents, grub boxes, and all kinds of equipment,” he said. “This very afternoon we’re going on a camp-out. But we pulled out our things earlier this week.”
He said all of the equipment that he and about a dozen scouts needed for the quick weekend getaway was safely packed in cars and ready to go.
However, what burned were key items they need for the week-long summer camping trips, including canoe oars and life vests.
Some tents and sleeping bags, often used for scouts who don’t have their own equipment, also melted from the heat.
Mechler said what concerns him most is the possible loss of a camper, which appeared to have been singed by the flames.
“I can see it’s damaged. Going to need to repaint it and do a little refurbishing on that,” he said.
On top of everything, they now are in need of a new place to store whatever they have left.
The fire left the storage building, itself, with a big hole in its roof.
The hall attached to it, a piece of the church’s history, didn’t escape harm.
It sustained a significant amount of smoke damage.
According to St. Margaret Mary’s website, the church built Gevers Hall more than 50 years ago, in 1970.
“This is historically where the priests had their house, their residence. And then it became a meeting hall,” Mechler said. “That part of the hall is going to need renovations as well.”
An arson team called in to investigate the fire was not able to say right away exactly what caused it.
The Boy Scout troop, meanwhile, is in need of help to replace the damaged items.
Mechler asks anyone interested in donating things like tents, sleeping bags and other camping gear to contact St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church at (210) 532-6309.