Church fires common, but usually not the result of arson

GREELEYVILLE, S.C. (AP) — As investigators probe the cause of a fire that destroyed a rural South Carolina black church rebuilt after the Ku Klux Klan torched it 20 years ago, statistics show church fires are not unusual, and that the vast majority in recent years were not intentionally set.

Of the blazes that occurred at houses of worship dozens of times a week across the nation, about 84 percent were not intentionally set and many arsons are probably not hate crimes, the data shows.

Local and federal investigators said Wednesday that they haven't ruled out any potential cause for the fire at the Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church.

[...] a federal official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly, told The Associated Press that preliminary indications show the fire was not the result of arson.

The fire was reported about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday and happened as federal authorities have been investigating a series of fires at black churches in several Southern states.

Just 16 percent of the blazes estimated at religious and funeral homes were intentionally set during the five-year period.

[...] a taskforce formed by then-President Bill Clinton found that 63 percent of the people arrested for bombing or burning black churches in the late 1990s were white.