The fire was first discovered around 6:00am today and from what I've seen on TV, all of the priests and nuns got out of the rectory and convent safely. Neither Casa Jesus nor FXW school are threatened. The fire was mostly put out by 8:00am.
From my bedroom I look down on the cathedral, and it's been heartbreaking to watch the streams of water from the Chicago Fire Department snorkels peel back the roof tiles in order to get to the interior of the roof where the fire is located. Early indications are that the inside of the cathedral is OK, just suffering from water damage and most of the fire damage is limited to the area between the ceiling and the external roof.
We sent out a tweet about this a few minutes after six this morning. If you're not on our Twitter list, you may want to join here: CAI on Twitter
On a personal note, this is my church. I'm a regular at the 7:30pm Saturday masses. I guess the only good thing is that the roof repairs over the summer gave the parish a contingency plan for what to do if the sanctuary is unavailable, so everyone will probably go back to having services in the auditorium again. I'll probably end up at Saint Peter's in the Loop, though. It's where I went before I moved to the North Side.
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