“It looked fine from the outside. We didn’t know it was eaten from the inside.”
Manila:
Local disaster relief officials said that as millions of Filipinos poured into churches to attend Mass on Ash Wednesday, the balcony of a Catholic church collapsed, killing an old woman and injuring 53 people.
It’s one of the busiest days on the church calendar, a day that marks the start of Lent in Asia’s Catholic outposts.
An 80-year-old woman died at a local hospital from chest injuries, Gina Eisen, chief of civil defense in San Jose del Monte near Manila, told AFP.
She said the 30-year-old wooden gallery of St. Peter the Apostle Church had been damaged by termites.
During Mass, it apparently collapsed due to the added weight, causing churchgoers to tumble into the aisles one floor below, Eisen said.
“City building officials discovered termites in part of the collapsed building,” she told AFP.
“It looked fine from the outside. We didn’t know it was eaten from the inside.”
The other victims, mostly elderly, suffered bruises and other minor injuries, she said, adding that about 400 people were attending Mass at the time.
Eisen said Mayor Arthur Robles had ordered the damaged church closed and investigators were examining the building’s structural safety.
Photos posted by Robs on his Facebook page showed part of a wooden balcony hanging less than a meter (3.3 feet) from the ground floor, which was littered with church pews, broken plastic chairs and debris.
Yellow police tape hung in front of the building, built in 1994, and another photo showed a paramedic rescuing a man.
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