COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – Twenty years after the Ku Klux Klan burned it down, a South Carolina black church, north of Charleston, has caught fire again and authorities were trying to determine why.
This time, the Tuesday night blaze came as storms moved through the area, casting uncertainty over whether the fire was intentionally set. No one was believed to be inside at the time.
But the fire at the Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal church in Greeleyville broke out at a time when federal authorities are investigating conflagrations at several other predominantly black churches in other states, but so far the fires don’t appear to be related.
Greeleyville is a town of about 400 people around 50 miles north of Charleston, where a pastor and eight members of a historic black church were fatally shot June 17 in what authorities are investigating as a hate crime.
Agents from the State Law Enforcement Division were on their way to the church before the fire was out, Division Chief Mark Keel said. But he said they will have to wait until the hot spots are extinguished before using dogs and other investigative tools to figure out what started it. He said investigators will be on the scene first thing Wednesday morning.