Investigators suspect arson in a Cotton Plant fire

COTTON PLANT — Arkansas State Police investigators, working alongside local authorities and ATF agents, think at least one of the three fires in Cotton Plant on Sunday night that destroyed a historic church and two other buildings was arson, based on investigation Tuesday, an official said.

Firefighters responded to the first fire, at an abandoned residence on North Vine Street, shortly after 11 p.m., Cotton Plant Fire Chief Jason Johnston said.

State Police can’t yet definitively say what caused the first fire at 256 Vine St. that night, State Police spokesman Bill Sadler said.

But the agency’s preliminary investigation suggests the blaze reported about an hour later at the Cotton Plant United Methodist Church, at 206 Central Ave., started when an ember from the Vine Street fire drifted to the church, setting it alight.

Fire fighting teams switched over to fighting the church blaze, but the main church building was a total loss, with only the nearby fellowship hall still standing, Johnston said.

A third fire consumed an abandoned residence across town the same night, Johnston said.

State Police investigators now believe that fire, near Arkansas 17 and Main Street, was set intentionally, Sadler said.

Investigators will continue their work Tuesday night and today, Sadler said.

“I know that the city’s just heartbroken,” Johnston said, saying the Cotton Plant United Methodist Church was an “absolutely beautiful old church.”

The church was built in 1912, said Melanie Tubbs, who lives in nearby Augusta and is the minister at Cotton Plant and two other United Methodist churches.

Tubbs and some other congregants visited the burning church Sunday night, when they “watched the stainedglass windows explode one at a time, which was devastating,” she said.

The fire destroyed the building, including a cross and Bible placed there in the 1930s; donated pews with family names on them; a wall of plaques commemorating local “saints of the church”; and a two- story wooden pocket door that slid into the wall to provide access to a loft space, Tubbs said.

“These are just things that can’t be replaced,” Tubbs said.

Although much was lost, Tubbs had brought the church’s meeting records, dating back to 1910, to her Augusta office for record work last fall. But she hadn’t gotten around to the work yet, meaning that the records were saved from the flames, she said.

The congregation, mostly older people, have strong memories of the church, Tubbs said.