Another Black Church Hit By Fire, Continuing Wave In Southeast

Fire swept through a 65-year-old rural black church Monday before daybreak, the fifth such blaze in western Alabama since December.

“It burned all the way down to the ground, nothing left but the brick frame,” said John Hodge, a deacon of the Rising Star Baptist Church. Damage could total $250,000, he said.

Fire crews found the small church engulfed in flames just before 3 a.m..

State and federal investigators were expected to release preliminary findings today on whether the fire was deliberately set.

The church, with an average attendance of about 52 people, had insurance to cover some of the losses, Hodge said.

The church, on a rarely traveled road in Hale County, was built in 1931 of pine but had been remodeled with a brick exterior.

No cause was found for the fires in Greene County, Ala., that destroyed one church in late December and two more in January.

A volunteer firefighter was charged with a Feb. 28 fire in Dallas County, Ala..

It was the 26th fire to strike a black church in the Southeast since early 1995.

The grim total: six in Tennessee, five each in Louisiana and South Carolina, five now in Alabama, three in Mississippi and one each in Virginia and Georgia.

At a congressional hearing last month, federal officials testified that there have been 51 church fires reported in the nation since January 1995, and more than half of them involved black churches.