Fire has destroyed a house in Fayette that served as a food pantry as well as an apartment for four college students. The students were away for their holiday break, but the couple who owns the building and operates the Fayette County Food Shelf says they’ll need to start from scratch.

“When you see something that you worked so hard on, it’s a just shock,” she says. “…But the more I thought about it, the more I had to look at it — it’s just stuff that’s replaceable.” Karen Martin and her husband, Duane, estimate they served about two-thousand needy people in 2013. “It may take a while but we’ll rebuild,” Karen Martin says. “We’ll get it back to where it should be.”

The couple plans to start a mobile food panty until they can get a permanent location.

(Reporting by Jill Kasparie, KCRG-TV)

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