|
Home 
San
Juan Capistrano
Little Chapters
Chapter VI
Little Chapters About San Juan Capistrano
Chapter VI: The Disaster
In the records of the Mission, the only entry relating to
the destruction of the big stone church by earthquake simply
states that it fell during the first Mass on the 8th of December,
1812, and that on the two days following, thirty nine bodies
which had been taken out of the ruins were buried in the cemetery.
The day was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the
Blessed Virgin, and the Father had previously announced that
the first Mass on that day was to be celebrated for the convenience
of the grown people. For this reason, no children were in
the church when it fell.
It was probably toward the end of the service, for the bells
in the tower were ringing to announce the next Mass, when
the assembled worshipers felt the ground tremble and saw the
walls and roof swaying back and forth. The domes in the rear
of the church cracked open and parted so that the sky was
seen through the crevices. Then the edges came together and
the stones began to fall. When the priest at the altar noticed
the earthquake and the commotion of the people, he turned
toward them and beckoned to them with both hands to come forward
into the sanctuary. Many rushed thither and were saved. Others
tried to escape through the doors at the rear and west side
of the church, but the movement of the walls had fastened
the doors in place so firmly that they could not be opened,
and as a consequence most of those who met their death were
caught under the falling domes just at the doorways. Up in
the tower two boys were ringing bells, and both perished,
but the body of at least one of them was never found. The
tower fell southward, away from the church, and the stones
were scattered over the whole length of the plaza of the town
in front.
Two days afterward, the workers among the debris heard a
groan, and clearing away the stones and mortar from the place,
found a woman crouched down between two large stones that
had fallen together like the letter A, so as to form a protecting
shield for her against the great heap of material above. She
was taken out alive and recovered from the shock of her terrible
imprisonment, to become the happy mother of a young San Juaneño
shortly afterwards.
The foregoing incidents relating to the disaster have been
gathered from several of the oldest natives of San Juan, who
agree substantially in narrating them. An attempt was made
in the early sixties to rebuild the walls by means of adobes
at which time the domes, or bovedas, that still remained over
the transept were unfortunately blown down with gun-powder
to give place to a wooden roof, but the rainy season set in
just at the critical time when a temporary roof was hardly
in place to protect the work, and it and much of the walls
fell in one night. Its rebuilding was never again undertaken.
Next: Chapter VII
|
