Sunday, December 28, 2008

Gompa burned in fire


This Information from a friend's friend in the US on the fire at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, an FPMT centre in Pomaia, Italy.

The gompa of ILTK was completely destroyed by fire this morning 26 December 2008. Most fortunately no one was hurt. Being Christmas there were very few people in the Institute. Petr and Cinzia, whose room is in the corridor facing the gompa, woke at about 7:30 AM to the smell of smoke. They opened the door of their room to find the corridor filled with smoke. They woke up the few people in the building and called the firemen. Several people stood outside the doors of the gompa and were able to contain the fire with fire estiguishers until the firemen arrived. The fire did not spread but the gompa is completely destroyed, as well as all statues and tangkas (as you can see from the photo). The firemen closed the entire wing of the building down to and including Shine's premises due to being worried about the floor of the gompa collapsing. Dagri Rinpoche arrived during the day and said to everyone that there is no great monastery that has not had big problems and that the fire should be taken as a sign that it is necessary to go ahead with the building of a new gompa. The Italian Buddhist Union has made an appeal for funding to rebuild and the news has been on national television. I myself am in Canada and heard the news from Ven. Raffaello Longo and our housemanager Petr Zon, who found the fire. It is thought that it was caused by a shortcircuit, perhaps in the Christmas lights (there were no candles buring at the time).

Please keep the institute in your prayers.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5650C259E0FAEBD5

Before it burned, it looked like this:
http://www.iltk.it/images/avi/gompa%20sfera.mov

More photos of the ILTK:
http://www.iltk.it/en/L0_S0_03_photogallery.htm#3

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh gosh..

ILTK's gompa was on fire.