COLUMBIA, Md. — From restoring smoke-damaged pews, to replacing grand pianos and fixing structural beam damage, the First Presbyterian Church of Howard County has a long way to go before it's back up and running.
The church caught fire when a series of severe storms blew through the area on Tuesday, July 1, but it almost went unnoticed.
Watch as church employees recount the experience
Thankfully, interim Pastor Ken Page and another employee were on site to smell the gas leak.
"We had lightning that got into the ground and then came into the building through a gas pipe, a fairly large one since it's a large commercial building, it then blew its way out of the gas pipe and started a geyser of fire in the fellowship hall under our church sanctuary," Page said.
It's not clear if the lightning struck the ground or the lightning rod which later jumped to the gas line about 10 inches away.
Because the fire was happening just a few inches above the sprinkler system, the fire alarm didn't trip right away.
"It could've taken the whole place up and could have injured people or killed people so there's anxiety and grief but it's certainly not as bad as it could be," Page said.
The church has 400 congregants. They've since relied on neighboring churches and will soon offer two services at a smaller building on site.
"These incidents are actually very common," said Sara Laird, an advocate who lost her husband, Battalion Chief Joshua Laird, to a similar fire in 2021 in Frederick County.
A few years prior Celeste Flynn also lost her husband, Lt. Nathan Flynn, in Howard County also to a gas pipe related fire.
Their losses have bonded the two, who have made raising awareness about the susceptibility of corrugated stainless steel tubing (CSST) pipes, a part of their life mission.
"The wall of the stainless steel portion of it is very thin. So in cases when we have this electrical activity like lightning storms, there is a high chance that if energy does reach that structure, the CSST could fail," Flynn said. "Some cases it can create a gas leak that can then create a further problem with the gas system on explosions, things like that. Overall, it's a very dangerous product."
And it doesn't take much, even a household current or an indirect lightning strike, as was the case in Flynn's death, can cause perforations and tears.
They run the nonprofit Phoenix Advocates.
Since 2018, they've tracked at least 40 cases of CSST-pipe related fires in Maryland and have helped to pass laws, including banning the sale of the earliest generation of CSST-pipe which is marked by yellow tubing.
But store shelves appear to still carry it, including at the Home Depot in Ellicott City as verified by WMAR-2 News.
Laird says she has seen it at several home improvement store locations throughout the state.
"Enforcing that has been challenging," Flynn acknowledged. "We're still working on the enforcement piece of it."
"The other misconception that we hear a lot is that if these products are bonded and grounded, then they're safe," Laird said. "We can tell you based on our documentation, we have seen numerous incidents where these failures have occurred even when the system was properly bonded and grounded."
Eventually, they hope all three generations of CSST pipes will be banned. Currently, there is a joint 12 month study between the Maryland Department of Labor and the State Fire Marshal's office.
The pair recommends switching to black iron pipe instead, something they did after their husbands' deaths.
"Even if there's nobody injured or no loss of life, it can be very traumatic for a family to lose their home and anytime first responders, firefighters have to operate on the fire ground, they're in danger," Laird said. "So if we can prevent these fires, we can keep everyone safer."