IN CONTRAST TO the light sheet of snow on the street, pocked by footsteps and sliced by the tracks of the James Street Cable Railway, that which holds to the roof of Trinity Church is as clean and unmarked as the winter sky. Actually, it is the sky.

The cause of the 1902 fire that collapsed the roof and blew out the windows at Trinity required, it seems, a complex cooperation between man and God. The string of calamities began with a winter storm that broke a telephone wire one block north of the church at Cherry Street and Eighth Avenue. Next, according to the fire chief, the ripped wire fell on and melted an electric wire that set "electricity flashing around on the wires of the adjacent streets" — even burning a telephone pole three blocks away.

The crossed wires also short-circuited the current to the church and ignited the wiring in its nearly new electric pipe organ. And that, by the chief's analysis, was what started a fire in the chancel that was not noticed behind the dark stained-glass windows because "we were busy with the wires." (Parishioners who lived nearby offered a different explanation. They claimed the fire was ignited by downed wires on the roof.)

Using parts of the surviving stone walls, builders quickly made a new, larger sanctuary with a tower. Ninety-nine years after the parish fire, this stone landmark was badly bruised again by the earthquake of 2001. Restoration work is expected to begin at last in 2005. In the meantime, the congregation has been meeting in the Parish Hall. By the witness of Trinity's rector, Paul Collins, "We have survived the fire and the earthquake, but we have also agreed that if the water reaches this high we will leave town."

Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.