Valiant work by firefighters in a freezing wind and waist-high snowdrifts Wednesday saved Swamp Evangelical Lutheran Church from complete destruction.

"I saw how many firemen were on the roof and in the hallways fighting to keep that fire out of the sanctuary," the Rev. Dennis L. Trout, pastor of the Reinholds church for 40 years, said Thursday.

"Those guys were magnificent."

Thursday, Trout surveyed the ruins.

VIDEO: Blaze damages church in Reinholds

The church's offices, library and media room, social hall, Sunday school classrooms and more were reduced to cinders and rubble, he said. "It's all gone."

"But the sanctuary is still standing. There's a lot of water damage and smoke damage, but it will be reconstitutable."

The alarm was called in around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday by more than one person, Trout said. Reinholds Fire Company was the first to respond.

Trout also arrived on the scene quickly. He said he felt helpless watching the firefighters battle the weather as well as the fire at the church, 275 Swamp Church Road.

"It was hard to get the trucks up there. When they did, it was hard to get water," Trout said.

"The hill was icy, and the trucks kept sliding. The township threw down salt and cinders to help get them up. Then, the hydrants are quite a distance from the church, so they had to lay down a lot of hose."

Worse still was the gusting wind, which fanned the flames.

"The wind played an awful role in the fire," Trout said. "It just beat that fire into an incinerator."

The A-frame church, built along with a Sunday school wing in 1958, serves a 204-year-old congregation.

"We serve more than 1,000 people," Trout said.

An addition, including offices and a social hall, was built in 1982. That addition, along with the original Sunday school classrooms, burned in the fire.

"More than likely it started in the office area," Trout said Thursday. "I talked with the fire marshal today, and he said more than likely it was one of the breaker panels. It was definitely electrical in nature."

The Reinholds fire chief could not be reached for comment Thursday.

A volunteer who answered the phone at Reinholds Fire Hall said a crew was back at the scene Thursday morning to beat down a small fire that flared up in the ruins.

But, as bad as the destruction was, Trout said he is grateful that the heart of the church survived the inferno.

"The firemen did an outstanding job preserving the sanctuary," he said. "They worked really hard to keep it intact."

Also surviving the fire were a $130,000 stained-glass window that was installed in 2006 as part of the church's 200th anniversary celebration and an Allen Renaissance pipeless organ purchased in 2002.

"We have a set of wooden double doors between the sanctuary and the rest of the building," Trout said. "It was scorched. The fire was right there, knocking to get in."

As for the church offices, Trout said many of the losses there are irreplaceable.

"We lost all our records. We lost all our history," he said.

"All our marriages, all our funerals, all our baptisms are gone. All the bulletins since 1936 are gone."

Everything made of metal simply melted in the heat, he said.

"I had a whole wall of books. You can't find any of them," Trout said. "I had the complete set of Martin Luther's works. That's 52 volumes, and now it's dust."

On his wall, Trout said, he had a graduation certificate from a Library of Congress program. The certificate was signed by then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Nearby hung a note and signature from Richard M. Nixon, who was vice president when he sat down for lunch with Trout in the House of Representatives cloakroom.

"I was just sitting there eating lunch. I was the only one in the cloakroom at the time, and someone sat down beside me. It was the vice president," Trout said.

"Now I no longer have his best wishes. That's gone."

Family photographs dating back to Trout's great-great-grandfather were burned too.

"I lost a lot of personal as well as church memorabilia," Trout said.

Church officials are meeting this week to decide where to hold services until the sanctuary can be restored.

"The sanctuary will require a complete refurbishment," he said.

"There's about 2 inches of water on the floor," he said. "The wood in the pews sucks that up like a wick, so they're removing the pews for the time being."

Plans for regular Sunday services as well as special events for Ash Wednesday and Lent will be spread by word of mouth, he said.

The church Web site at www.calm-elca.org/swamp — which is still largely undeveloped — has a message from Trout that reads: "Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God."

"I put that up quite a while ago," Trout said, chuckling. "It's quite timely now."

tknapp@lnpnews.com