| Wednesday 22 December 1999 |
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$20M mansion blaze a mystery
After two days spent sifting through the charred ruins of the $20 million mansion built by pop diva Mariah Carey and former husband Tommy Mottola, fire officials said yesterday that they could not determine what caused it to burn down. The county Cause and Origin Team has given up trying to figure out what started the fire because the unoccupied building was destroyed, Mount Kisco Fire Chief Ray Zaccaro said yesterday.
"They've turned the investigation over to the insurance company to see if they can find out anything," Zaccaro said. "It's difficult because the house was pretty much burned, so there's no real evidence of what happened."
The 22,000-square-foot mansion was bought last year by multimillionaire financier Nelson Peltz after Carey and Mottola's marital split. Peltz owns a neighboring 106-acre estate. The name of Peltz's insurance company and the amount of coverage on the mansion was unavailable yesterday. Peltz was renovating the Sarles Street house, said his lawyer, Neale Albert.
Fire razed the fortresslike mansion despite the efforts of about 100 firefighters from Mount Kisco, Bedford Hills, Armonk, Chappaqua, Katonah and Pleasantville. "It's an isolated estate," said Henry Campbell, a consultant hired to run Westchester County Fire Control in Valhalla. "The neighbors didn't notice it until it had been burning for a while, and by then it was too late."
The fire was reported at 1:29 a.m. Saturday, Campbell said, and the first firefighters were dispatched a minute later. Zaccaro arrived at the fire scene "within two minutes of the dispatch," Campbell said, and reported that the top two floors of the three-story mansion were engulfed in flames.
The mansion included nine bedrooms, seven fireplaces, a pistol range, ballroom, conservatory, recording studio and indoor and outdoor swimming pools. It was not equipped with fire sprinklers, said Bedford Building Inspector Richard Megna. Sprinklers are not required under local laws, he said.
Megna said he had not inspected the mansion because the renovation work was "all cosmetic in nature and did not require a building permit." Peltz's lawyer said it was too soon for the family to think about rebuilding. "They're terribly sad for what happened," Albert said. "Terribly thankful that nobody got hurt." A publicist for Carey had no comment. (The Journal News, December 21, 1999)
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