Rose­marie Sant

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.