photo by Amelia Holliday | Hazard Herald

The shopping center in Allais caught fire Saturday afternoon, leaving the structure badly in disrepair.

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A fire in an abandoned shopping center in the Allais community of Hazard has left the building badly in disrepair.

Hazard Fire Department received the call about the fire on Saturday at 2:51 p.m., Sam Stacy, Hazard fire chief, said.

“When they got there was smoke and flames coming out of the building, the storefront right beside where the grocery store was,” he said.

The store front had at one time been apparently used as a consignment shop, Stacy said.

“They had clothing that was about three to four feet deep that was in there, and someone had set that clothing on fire,” he added.

Stacy said it took firefighters two and a half hours to extinguish the fire, and the shopping center sustained much structural damage.

“It burned through the roof and the trusses going across the store and there’s a very good chance that they could fall. There was a block wall separating that store from the old grocery store, though,” he said.

Stacy said the building is badly in need of repair, and without that it may need to be torn down in the near future.

“Most of the wiring has been stripped out of it, they’ve stripped it all out of the old grocery store, and the storefront that the fire was actually in had no type of wiring in it. People just go in there and strip stuff out of it.”

Stacy said the fire department has turned the ongoing arson investigation over to the Hazard Police Department.