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Officials suspect fire was racially motivated
Sunday, March 04, 2001 By Bill Heltzel, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The words "die nigger" were spray-painted on an outside wall and an accelerant was used to start a fire early yesterday morning in the home of a mixed-race couple in Greene County.
State police were investigating the possibility of ethnic intimidation because of the racially motivated writings.
The couple, whom police and their landlord would not identify, and two children were not home when the fire was discovered.
The house is in Nemacolin, an old coal patch town on the Monongahela River, about 38 miles south of Pittsburgh.
Michael Plavi of Nemacolin, who owns the house with Joe Cybak of Carmichaels, was taken aback by the epithet.
"I have a hard time swallowing that we have a problem with racism down here because I've never seen it," he said. "Not that it couldn't happen. . . . But I've been down here over 20 years and I find it hard to believe anything like that exists."
He said he rents another house to a black couple "just up the road" and several black families live in the area.
"Everybody gets along with everybody."
The couple moved in two months ago. The man works at a prison and might have been at work when the fire was reported. The woman and children were visiting family in the Pittsburgh area.
He said the family lost all its belongings.
The fire was reported at 1:47 a.m. yesterday at 59 Diaz Ave. Nemacolin Fire Chief Charles Plasko arrived about 2 a.m., and he also was amazed by the raw slur.
"I was really shocked and surprised when I pulled on the scene and saw that," Plasko said. "I thought, 'Oh, my God.' "
No flames were showing but there was heavy smoke inside. Firefighters broke in and put out the fire quickly.
It appeared to have been set in the center of the living room in a pile of furniture. It burned through the floor. Heat and smoke damaged the second floor. Police estimated damage at $30,000.
Carmichaels-Cumberland Volunteer Fire Department assisted the Nemacolin firefighters.
State police in Waynesburg asked that anyone with information about the fire call them at 724-627-6151.
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