An ancient wooden chapel, at a temple in Thailand’s northern province of Lampang, burned down on Thursday night.
The abbot of Wat Phae Luang reportedly told the police that the 170-year-old teak wood chapel was undergoing renovation, in preparation for the holding of a Yok Cho Fah ceremony, adding that nobody was in the chapel at the time of the fire, though some witnesses claim to have seen flames on the roof.
Cho Fah is a decorative ornament used to adorn both ends of a temple’s roof.
Several fire trucks rushed to the temple and it took firefighters about 40 minutes to get the fire under control.
Two wood-crafted Buddha statues, which were thought to be several hundred years old, were rescued from the chapel, but they had sustained some fire damage.
The cause of the blaze is being investigated.
