CANTON, N.C. --- A nonprofit serving hundreds of people in Haywood County is closer to being ready to reopen thanks to help from the community.

 

What You Need To Know

Canton Community Kitchen serves more than 300 families, elderly and homeless

The community kitchen was heavily damaged by Tropical Storm Fred

The kitchen has been getting rebuilt by the hands of community members

 

Last week's storm heavily damaged the Canton Community Kitchen. The executive director, Allison Jennings, and volunteers are rebuilding and re-organizing the inside of the community kitchen.

“Basically getting everything back to where it’s suppose to be, and that way we can see what we lost..because we still don’t know everything we lost at this point,” Jennings said.

The building saw 4 feet of water, damaged windows and 3 inches of mud on the floor. And now, all that has been completely cleaned up with the help of more than 100 volunteers over the last few days.

“We had a restoration company out of Tennessee show up Wednesday morning, awesome. They come in and did all our sheet rock, pressured washed our floors. We had the humidifiers in here since Saturday, and they just picked them up this morning. Dried out our building, sanitized our wood so it would prevent the mold and everything,” she said.

The building supplies food boxes and meals for people who are food insecure, which is more than 300 people in the community.

Jennings says she is grateful for what all people have done for her, but she says she hurts for the people still in need.

 “It breaks my heart that they are still in that position, but our goal is to feed people and if we can get up and running we can help take that on again. Like if we get back to normal on this end of the county this side of the town,” Jennings said.

Jennings says her goal is to be back open in a month, but it may be a little longer due to appliances still not working. If you would like to help, she ask that you call 828-593-9319.