When I was a Union Steward, we had two instances of members who's cars were vandalized and the N word scratched into the paint. It was pretty bad and within weeks, the lawyers were involved. About a month later, it was found out that they had done it themselves. One was caught on camera doing it, and the other admitted to doing it himself after the person he bragged to about doing it, turned him in.
There was a string of church burnings in the 90's that made the news. It was a pretty big deal at the time, with the usual protesters leading marches and accusations about racism being through about. Then it discovered that the person who was starting the fires was black, and was starting the fires to fake hate crimes, it all disappeared.
The other thought is that it could have be kids, or a kid, playing with matches. We just had a scare at our house. Our 8 year old took the empty popcorn bag and lit it on fire on the kitchen floor. His 11 year old sister was right there, said she was telling him not to do it, but for whatever reason, he lit it on fire and they watched it burn. Fortunately, we have concrete floors and there was no damage. The house just smelled like smoke and they didn't clean up all the ashes.
One of the guys my Dad used to work with at PacBell, who knows electricity and knows better, used black tape to splice together some romex in his wall during a remodel. He was about two feet short on the run, so he twisted the wire together and wrapped it with the tape. As everyone knows, black tape dries out and comes apart. It might take ten years, or it might be just a few years, but it always comes apart. Conditions were perfect for this, and when his house burned down, that's where they determined the fire started. As a Contractor, one of my clients is a fairly large church. They have had members and local handy men working on it for decades. They thought they were saving money by using volunteers or hiring those in need of a buck to get them through a rough time. Unfortunately, most of what was done was either illegal or a band aid type fix. I've had to replace and redo allot of electrical work because of the black tape syndrome. I can't even begin to count how many times I see this. Nobody uses junction boxes for their splices and nobody uses wire nuts. Then there is the interior romex used outside for lighting that's coming apart. In just a couple of years, the outside rubber is cracked and broken off from the elements. And my next project there is to redo the wiring of some tract lights that some members installed without conduit. The scary part is that somebody has already hit and split the wire so that I can see copper on the black wire. I've fixed that, but need to pull it all down and redo it with conduit and junction boxes.
Just last week, a kid was shocked at the church from trying to turn on a light in the gym. The switches need a key to turn them on, but he figured he could stick the tip of a knife in there and get it that way. He might have done this before, or others might have told him that he could do it. Anyway, it's a 20 amp breaker on a 4 pole switch. It shocked him pretty good and blacked the terminals of two wires, plus the back of the cover plate.
If that church is anything like this one, then it could be an electrical fire caused from not doing a repair or improvement properly. Too many fires are caused from shortcuts. It could also be caused from somebody meaning well, but not understanding that sticking metal into an electrical receptical is a bad idea.
It's sad when anything burns down. Sorry to hear about this, but would sure like to hear what the official reason for the fire turns out to be.
Eddie
