Roman Catholic priest Father Michael Cockburn says the sacristy of the Cathedral Immaculate Conception looked as “though a bomb had gone off,” after the massive 6.9 earthquake which struck last Tuesday.
Cockburn was conducting an evening mass when the massive quake hit, sending fragments crashing through church’s roof.
Speaking to the T&T Guardian about the experience, Cockburn recalled that he was conducting a “normal, routine 5 pm mass, and had just given the last person in the line Communion.”
“It was just about 5.30 and as I was about to go back to the altar I suddenly felt as though I was getting light headed. I began to feel a kind of dizziness. I thought a fainting spell was coming over me,” he said.
He said he was feeling unsteady, and said, “My goodness is it some kind of bad feeling coming on?”
But the priest, who is 77 years old, said as he tried walking he realised the ground was also unsteady under his feet and said what he was feeling was not himself but it was the earthquake which gave him a sense that his head was spinning.
Through it all he held on tightly to the bowl holding the Holy Communion as he focused on making the two to three steps back to the altar and put the Communion bowl down, the first thing was to take it to the altar.
Seconds after reaching the altar, he said, “All hell broke loose. That is when the place started to shake in real earnest and all I could do was just hold on to the side of the altar for dear life. If I let go I am sure I would have fallen down.”
Within seconds, he said, “There was this violent shaking which seemed to go on non-stop, it subsidised and then more again.”
Cockburn recalled that the whole interior of the Cathedral was rattling.
“It is a big Cathedral but you could sense the shaking and the rattling. It was pretty severe, all this creaking was going on and it sounded terrible.”
Asked if he was scared, he said, “Not really. You don’t have the time to be scared. You don’t know what’s hitting you.”
From his recollection, he said, “Everyone in the church was calm. It was a small congregation, a little more than 20 people well behaved like the priest.”
Cockburn said there was “no panic in the church, the people quietly remained in place, I did not give them an example to panic. I just stood there holding on to the altar.”
He, however, recalled hearing screaming and “a lot of noise from outside where people were reacting.”
While he showed no visible signs of panic, he recalled talking to Jesus in his head.
“So I say okay Jesus you right here with me Jesus. I said ok Jesus we better see what going on now. So I kept making a little private prayer.”
The shaking and rattling, he said, went on for a while. “Eventually it stopped and I went about my business and put back the communion. We had the closing prayer but by then the current had gone so there was no more microphone or lights.” He recalled a girl “leading the singing sang with her natural voice and people joined in.”
Asked whether he made reference to the earthquake at the end of the mass, Cockburn said no.
“There was no sense in saying anything. What did I need to say? So I added nothing to the normal format of the mass, I said the prayer, people sang and then I walked back to the sacristy and that’s where I saw the big damage.”
Describing what he saw, Cockburn said, “It looked like some thunderbolt coming through the rook. It looked like a war zone and I mean rubble, rubble, rubble.
“Junks of concrete and stone covered the entire extent of the floor. It was as though a bomb had gone off, the whole floor was scattered with a lot of debris and then the larger part the bulk of the stone this big heavy thing was right there in the middle, so it looked disastrous and then there was the big gaping hole at the top so it looked worse than it actually was.”
“The damage was caused by a piece of the finial which crumbled and came through the roof. There was a big gaping hole and the greater part of that monument was still there. It was a big hefty piece of concrete which fell into the church. That was a drama!” he said.
It was at that stage he said, “I became “concerned about what would happen now. Because the whole cathedral was just renovated, it looked like something major had happened and I felt wow do we have to go and spend a set of money now to redo all of this?”
After he left the church to return to his home opposite the cathedral, he said, “Everything was cool and calm.”
His cellphone and internet were down but came back up shortly after and he contacted friends and relatives to ensure they were okay.
Engineers who visited the cathedral confirmed there was no structural damage. But the cathedral will remain closed for about two weeks and all masses will be held at the Sacred Heart Church on Richmond Street.
Three days after the earthquake, Cockburn said he feels as normal as can be and has suffered no after effects.
Cockburn thanked God for his own personal safety and that of the congregation in the church at the time. He is also praying for citizens.
“I really hope that people would not have been traumatised,” he said.
Next year will make it 50 years since Cockburn was ordained as a priest. The only other time he experienced anything similar to Tuesday’s quake was on a Saturday afternoon in 1954 when he was 12 years old. He recalled, “There was a major earthquake, it was pretty bad, the Roman Catholic Church in Sangre Grande was damaged and they had to rebuild a brand new church.”
Later on, the church was renovated and was used by Servol and then by nuns who used it as a convent.
Cockburn was ordained in 1969 at the age of 28 in the church which was constructed in Sangre Grande to replace the church damaged in the earthquake.
“The rebuilding and completion coincided with my being ordained,” he said.