Possibly
This part was painful to read, while still providing some hope.
Quote:
"We don't really know how much tobacco we have lost," said Carlos Fuente Jr. in a telephone interview from the Dominican Republic today. "But it was a lot—a lot of tobacco."
Fuente Jr. declined to give any specific figures about the quantity or the dollar value of the tobacco lost. But, he said that it included bales of some irreplaceable tobacco that had been purchased in 1990 from a Connecticut grower and may have been harvested as long ago as 1960. Fuente Jr. said the tobacco was still being saved for some special projects. He added, however, that the bulk of the tobacco was regular filler leaves, and that there was very little wrapper tobacco in the burned buildings.
"It's just so sad. You save it. You wait. You save it some more. In my lifetime, we won't be able to recreate some of this tobacco," Fuente Jr. said.
He said that the company had been moving tobacco around to different warehouses in recent months to be sure that the leaves used in their products weren't all in the same place. But he admitted that fire would force them to cut back production for the next year, possibly even for two years
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Fuente Warehouse Fire
