Despite last week’s fire, the 44th annual Market Days festival at Eastern Market went on as planned. Attendees were allowed to view the damaged interior of the building from a specially set up barricade at one of the Market entrances.

Check out more photos from inside the Market.

After work yesterday, I took photos of the destruction at Eastern Market. Pictures cannot do justice to what I saw; the interior is completely destroyed. Stalls were left charred. Electric wires swung about. Windows frames that weren’t destroyed had yellowed, melted plexiglass covering their gaps. That’s just what I could see from outside looking through open doors and broken windows.

Worse than seeing the damage was the smell. A combination of burnt plastic, insulation, produce, meat, wires and wood combined to form a strange odor. No doubt it will get worse as any meats — cooked or otherwise — left behind rot.

Mayor Fenty pledges to rebuild the Market, but it can’t happen soon enough. Eastern Market is vital to the community; local businesses (and a couple of corporate ones) sprang up nearby because of the Market’s draw. It afforded visitors a cross-section of Washington life you don’t get to see in the tourist zone. And it gave area residents a comparably-priced alternative to the local megamarts that specialize in food grown for quantity, not quality.

Before I left for the office this morning, I ate a bowl of cereal topped with strawberries my roommate picked up from Eastern Market on Sunday. I realized how much we take the Market for granted at home; we can never find produce that good at Safeway or Giant.

The Capitol Hill Community Foundation is accepting contributions for the vendors affected by the fire. Please give if you can; if you do, be sure to designate it for Eastern Market’s vendors.