Cajun restaurant starts effort to provide free meals to ‘Aspen Acres’ fire evacuees

CAÑON CITY, Colo. (KRDO) -- Disasters like the "Aspen Acres" fire are nothing new to Gulf Coast natives Marcus and Kelli Summerford.

"We evacuated because of Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005," Marcus said. "We came to Colorado during COVID, and we love it."

Marcus, who worked under some of the best chefs in New Orleans, decided to open a Cajun restaurant two years ago, and Homer's Gumbo Pot is in business on Elm Avenue.

Marcus and Kelli's experience as evacuees motivated them to provide free meals to fire evacuees and firefighters.

"I've been down to a backpack of clothes twice in my life, because of disasters," he said.

20 to 30 evacuees have visited the restaurant per day so far to enjoy those meals.

"Going through [Hurricane] Katrina, one thing that really stuck with me after the storm was that even when we were back in our houses, there was no hot food," he recalled. "There was no cold food. Everything was just room temperature and mediocre. And every time there's a disaster, I do what all Southerners do -- try to feed their neighbors something decent and hearty."

To reach more evacuees, the Summerfords teamed up with the owner of a food truck called The Buffalo Stop, who distributes the meals at evacuation shelters and other locations of need.

"We heard people needed food, we heard people weren't getting as much food as they needed, there were still hungry bellies at the end of the day," said owner P.K. Graves. "Instead of jumping through all of the hoops, we just decided, let's just take our own kitchen down there."

Graves and the Summerfords are planning to organize a fund-raising event at the end of this month to benefit evacuees.

For the free meals, they said that they're paying for them out of pocket, or with donations.

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