Cigarette Burned Down Tobacco Executive's Home

WILMINGTON, N.C.(Reuter) - A discarded cigarette was the probable cause of a fire that destroyed the luxury vacation home of the president of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and caused $1 million in damages, fire officials saidTuesday.
     The three-floor vacation home of Reynolds President Andrew Schindler on upscale Figure Eight island was reduced to a row of charred pilings after it caught fire while workers installing ceiling tile were at lunch Friday.
     Damage to the house was estimated at $750,000. Damage caused to houses nearby by flying embers as the fire raged was estimated at $250,000.
     "Every county fire department around was there," said a spokesman for the Wilmington Fire Department.
     Fire officials said inspectors had not made a final determination of what caused the accidental blaze. But they said it likely was caused by a cigarette butt left by a worker who told inspectors he had smoked near where the fire started about half an hour before the crew left.
     "It's a very good possibility it was started by a discarded
cigarette," New Hanover County fire marshal Aubrey Rivenbark told the Wilmington Star-News newspaper in Tuesday's editions. "It could've been dropped, caught by the wind and rolled into the flower bed."
     Rivenbark was not immediately available to comment Tuesday.
     R.J. Reynolds Tobacco is a unit of RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. The second-largest U.S. tobacco company, its brands include Camel, Winston and Salem.