A Clax­ton Bay woman threw cau­tion to her ail­ments on Sun­day night and hob­bled in­side a church with buck­ets of wa­ter to ex­tin­guish a fire set in the al­tar room.

Christyn Gib­son, 65, a sur­vivor of three heart at­tacks, rushed in­to the St Fran­cis Shrine Church of the All Saints at Di­a­mond Vil­lage, Clax­ton Bay, to put out the fire.

The fire erupt­ed around 8 pm, hours af­ter Sun­day morn­ing ser­vice at the Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist Church.

De­spite the church’s re­mote lo­ca­tion in a high-crime area, it con­tin­ued its op­er­a­tions with a mod­est mem­ber­ship of 25, car­ry­ing on af­ter the pass­ing of its founder, Ju­nior Bernard, in 2021.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Gib­son re­count­ed the mo­ment she be­came aware of the fire.

Alert­ed by a pass­ing cy­clist, she re­called how she hur­ried to the scene to see the main al­tar ablaze.

“A guy was pass­ing and he said the church was on fire. I say, the church is on fire? So now I hop­ping com­ing down to see,” she re­called. Up­on ar­rival, she im­me­di­ate­ly took ac­tion.

“I run to the bar­rel, take the buck­et and start out­ing down the fire. On the side of the al­tar, more bench­es were in flames,” she re­count­ed.

De­ter­mined to save the cher­ished in­sti­tu­tion, Gib­son sin­gle-hand­ed­ly fetched wa­ter in buck­ets, mak­ing eight trips de­spite her im­paired leg. The near­est neigh­bour was not at home so there was no one to help her.

Gib­son said she found it strange that all the wood­en bench­es were re­moved from their usu­al place and piled on top of the burn­ing al­tar. She said the can­dle on the cen­tre pole was light­ing but this did not seem to be the cause of the fire.

The Holy Bible had been cast aside and the an­ces­tral al­tar, with cal­abash and flow­ers, lay scat­tered. Judg­ing from the ob­vi­ous van­dal­ism, Gib­son said she knew some­thing was amiss. How­ev­er, she could not say who was re­spon­si­ble.

She al­so did not know where she got the strength to lift the heavy bench­es to put out the fire.

“I don’t know how I do it. The bench­es were so heavy I don’t know where I got the strength to pull off the bench­es. No­body helped me, me alone. I say I can­not let the church burn, not be­cause the man (founder) dead, it should burn,” she added.

Res­i­dents from Di­a­mond Vil­lage who wor­ship at the church de­scribed Gib­son as a hero. A woman who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty said the po­lice took hours to ar­rive. There was no dust­ing of fin­ger­prints at the time Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed.

“We ex­pect­ed the po­lice to come here a few hours ago but no­body came as yet,” the res­i­dent said. An­oth­er res­i­dent ex­plained that two weeks ago, an­oth­er fire oc­curred near the church but they were un­sure whether both in­ci­dents were con­nect­ed.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, the pres­i­dent of the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion Pun­dit Lloyd Mukram Sir­joo said in­ci­dents of sac­ri­lege and des­e­cra­tion have con­tin­ued to in­crease.

He stressed the need for in­creased se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures and stricter penal­ties for per­pe­tra­tors, at­tribut­ing so­ci­etal de­cay to the break­down of fa­mil­ial and gov­ern­men­tal struc­tures.

While many in­sti­tu­tions have bol­stered se­cu­ri­ty through sur­veil­lance and watch groups, Pun­dit Sir­joo said po­lice have not made ar­rests.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that the po­lice can­not mon­i­tor every place of wor­ship, Pun­dit Sir­joo said it was time for harsh­er penal­ties to be in­tro­duced. He al­so called for prayer and heal­ing for the na­tion.