Hurricane Irma: Families race to grocery, hardware stores for emergency supplies

Empty store shelves, long gas lines and plywood-laden trucks are the norm across Collier County with Hurricane Irma projected to move toward parts of Florida by the end of the week.

On Tuesday, while the hurricane winds reached 185 mph in the eastern Caribbean, people flocked to hardware and grocery stores with plans to stock up on supplies. Hardware stores had run out of plywood, water bottles, generators and other emergency supplies by Tuesday afternoon, and all grocery stores were out of bottles of drinking water.

More:Hurricane guide: Tips for staying home during a hurricane

Hardware supplies

“It’s been nonstop this week with people coming in,” said Sarah Pokarney, loss prevention and safety manager at the Lowe's on Airport-Pulling Road off Naples Boulevard.

She said the store will receive truck shipments every day throughout the week.

“We’re just waiting for the trucks to come in with more emergency equipment and getting it out for people to buy it and get ready for the storm,” she added.

Marina Sallee, 48, of Naples, was able to get sandbags at Lowe’s for her mother’s house in Naples Park.

Sallee said she and her family have stocked up on canned goods, water, flashlights, batteries and plywood shutters.

“I’ve been in Naples since '88, but this is the first time I’ve really been concerned by a hurricane other than Hurricane Wilma in 2005,” she said.

At Home Depot at Pine Ridge and Airport-Pulling roads, Dave Moran, 54, and his son were able to get their hands on the remaining plywood before it ran out Tuesday afternoon.

"If it even grazes us, we have to be prepared," Moran said. 

He and his family plan to board up their North Naples home. Depending on where the hurricane goes, Moran said they may evacuate north. 

"But it's still four days away," he said.

When Bob Powers, 59, of Naples, arrived at the store a little later that day, plywood was out of stock.

“I think we’re pretty set besides that. We have our water, and we got our generator,” Powers said.

He and his family plan to board up their home and drive up to North Carolina to stay with their son.  

“You don’t want to mess with a hurricane,” he added.

Orchard Supply Hardware at Immokalee Road and U.S. 41 in North Naples isn’t receiving another shipment of emergency supplies until Tuesday post-hurricane.

Store manager Darryl Rivera said the store still has many hurricane supplies available, including batteries and polycarbonate shutters. He said they ran out of generators Tuesday morning.  

"There's a heightened sense of awareness given the destruction we saw in Houston," Rivera said about Hurricane Harvey, which made landfall near Corpus Christi and dumped rain in Texas and Louisiana last month. 

"That's a mean-looking storm out there, though," he added about Hurricane Irma.

Donna Riley, 91, was picking up some last-minute supplies, including a flashlight, at Orchard.

"I've been through a lot of hurricanes," said Riley, who has lived in Naples for 35 years. She lives in a North Naples retirement community. 

At Sunshine Ace Hardware off U.S. 41 in downtown Naples, most everything was sold out, including plywood, water, lanterns, flashlights and sandbags.

“We got trucks coming Wednesday around noon and another one on Friday with more supplies,” said Sherry Kish, assistant store manager at the U.S. 41 location. All Ace stores across Southwest Florida are scheduled to receive the shipments.  

The gas stations were just as packed Tuesday.

Long lines plagued the Costco gas station off Naples Boulevard. The line moved gradually as many loaded up on gas.

Cindy Paress, 50, of Naples, plans to sit tight at home with her family and urges everyone to prepare for the storm.

“Put the car in the garage if you can, stay indoors and ride it out,” she said.  

Water and groceries

Naples is all dried up, with no clear answer to when more water, and how much of it, is on its way.

"It could be in a minute, in an hour, and it might never show up" said Jeff Williams, general manager of the Sam’s Club at Immokalee and Airport-Pulling roads in North Naples.

Instead, customers Tuesday morning were buying up sparkling water, seltzer water, Gatorade and other beverages. The bulk wholesale store sold 170 pallets of drinking water in the last two days, Williams said, and on the heels of Hurricane Harvey, he wondered if resources were stretched eventhinner.

“I don’t think anybody in Naples has it anymore,” he said. “Normally we schedule trucks, but right now we’re on non-schedule. They appear, and we unload it — if they appear. If the Houston thing wasn’t going on, I think we’d have plenty of water.”

Mike Frye said he got the last case of bottled drinking water from Sam’s on Tuesday. A former airboat captain, Frye has lived in Southwest Florida for nearly 60 years. He loaded oranges, canned vegetables, V8 juice, paper towels and other supplies in his truck Tuesday morning.

“Water and gasoline are the two main things, which they’re going to run out of today real quick,” he said. “I try to keep a full tank of gas every time. I’ve been through a few hurricanes down here, and you need things to drink, and you need things to eat.”

Frye said he spent 1½ hours navigating the store and waiting in lines, which snaked through aisles 20 to 30 people deep.

“It all depends where it turns,” he said. “That’s the whole key to it. If it turns where they’re predicting, it will be devastating. ... Get ready and do it now because people are running out of stuff.”

Standing in line at Sam’s Club, Heather Burch stocked up on 26 bags of 24-pound dry cat food and 26 cases of wet cat food.

"This is not nearly enough," said Burch, who runs Brigid’s Crossing Foundation, a cat shelter in North Naples.

She cares for about 350 senior cats, many of them with medical needs. With Hurricane Irma approaching, she’s reached out to a national foundation with hopes that they’ll take the cats elsewhere. The shelter flooded nearly three weeks ago when Southwest Florida was drenched with heavy rainfall.

Her carload of cat food will last about four days, she said. Her foundation is accepting donations online at brigid.com/donate.

"We really need help," she said with tears in her eyes. "I'm the only one. All of my volunteers are leaving town."

Aldi in North Naples ran out of water first thing Tuesday morning when a line of about 100 people arrived when the doors opened at 9 a.m. Store manager Noah Morgan said he doesn't know when or how much more will arrive, but that it will in the coming days.

It’s more of the same at other Naples grocery stores. Publix, which started running out of water Monday at some locations, did not return phone calls by Tuesday afternoon.

And Costco’s stock of drinking water was depleted around 11 a.m. Tuesday. Lines there also snaked toward the back of the store, and people turned away at the entrance when they heard there was no water.

Susan Sissman was happy to stock up on bottles of seltzer water, canned beans, tuna, and supplies for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She’s been in Florida since 1989, so she’s figured out a system to prepare for hurricanes. The key, she said, is to pack water and food in the freezer so that it will thaw out if the power goes down.

She wasn’t too worried about the lack of water Tuesday in Naples.

“They’ll have water by tomorrow,” she said. “The word will go out.”