Food Bank reopens warehouse four weeks after arson

Nearly one month after a devastating fire, the Food Bank for Monterey County is getting ready to reopen its doors. On Monday, workers made a big step toward getting back to normal.

“It’s an exciting day,” Melissa Kendrick, executive director of the Food Bank for Monterey County said. “We are finally moving back into the warehouse, so this is great for the community. We’ll be up to full operations by the end of the week and we were only able to do this because of the tremendous outpouring of support from the community.”

Workers were able to move canned food, fresh produce and dairy products into the main warehouse that was damaged during an arson fire late last month. All of the food that was in there at the time of the fire had to be thrown away. Now that it’s stocked up with loaves of bread, cans of soup and jars of peanut butter, people will be able to start donating food by the end of the week.

“I know many people have been calling in,” Kendrick said. “They want to do food drives, they want to bring food down and up until this point, we’ve had to kind of put that on hold. But as of Friday, we are going to be open for operations so we will welcome food donations at that point and we thank everyone in the community for all that they have done for us.”

Not only have donations from people in Monterey County helped, but so have corporate ones. On Monday, Bank of America donated $15,000.

It’s important to note that throughout the entire ordeal, the Food Bank still managed to help the county’s most vulnerable.

“We’ve been supporting all of our direct distribution sites,” Kendrick explained. “We have opened our family markets last week, supporting our senior markets, our kids programs. So although we’ve been working from alternative locations, we have been doing what we need to do so that our recipient population was able to receive the nourishment that they need.”

As of Monday, fire officials do not have any leads on the suspected arsonist. There’s still a $6,000 reward to find whoever set the fire. If you know anything, you can call 1-800-78-CRIME.