Church Explosion Miracle or Luck?

The choir practise at West Side Baptist Church began at 7.20 pm on the dot. Just as it had every single other Wednesday. March the 1st 1950 was no different. At least it shouldn’t have been. At 7.25 pm a giant explosion ripped through the Church, levelling it completely. A broken gas pipe ignited by the furnace destroyed the entire building.

Unbelievably, nobody died, or was even injured in the slightest. Why?

A series of fortunate events

On the afternoon of the explosion, the Reverend Klempel had been to the Church and lit the furnace. As most Church’s are, it was cold inside and he wanted it nice for when the choir started to arrive, normally around 7.15 pm.

He then went home and had dinner. He planned to return before the practise to finish getting everything ready. However, by the time he returned, the Church was nothing but rubble.

So how come absolutely nobody was hurt in the explosion?

Every single one of the choir practise participants was late that day. Over 15 of them. The odds of that happening are millions to one.

The Reverend and his wife had a dress to iron at the last minute for their daughter. She had spilled her dinner on the one she was wearing.

Sadie and Royena Estes were late because their car wouldn’t start. They called another member, Ladona Vandergrift to pick them up. She herself was running late due to a complicated math problem in her homework.

Mrs Schuster and her daughter Susan were usually some of the first to arrive. On this fateful night however, she had to help her elderly mother get ready and was behind schedule.

Herbert Kipf was so busy writing a letter he needed to post, he ran a few minutes later. He made himself even later while finding a post box to mail it from.

Harvey Ahl and his wife usually got their two boys ready for Church. Fortunately for Harvey, his wife was away and it took him much longer to get them ready than it normally would.

The pianist, Marilyn, fell asleep after dinner, waking late. This also made her mother Martha late.

Joyce Black, who only lived across the street from the Church, recalls being too tired to get up. She was just about to muster herself when the Church exploded.

And finally, Lucille Jones. She was lost in a radio program, making her and Dorothy Wood late (she should have been picking Dorothy up on her way).

Divine Intervention or plain old luck?

Let’s face it. The odds are a million to one or more for everyone to be late. But it still can happen. Just to be alive you’ve already beaten odds of trillions to one.

To get so lucky that nobody was there, even though they should have been is very, very fortunate.

If you ask the members of the choir though, they have only one explanation that they find satisfactory.

They all simply stated that it was “An act of God” that made them all late.

I’ll leave it up to you, dear reader, to make your own mind up.