Posted on 09/06/2005 11:14:46 PM PDT by Cedar
GREENVILLE - A rumor spread on Saturday created a panic in the city and caused untold damage to area stores from mobs of people trying to secure food supplies and other items using emergency food stamp vouchers.
Wal-Mart, both Kroger stores, Kmart, Bing's and other smaller stores in the city were left in shambles Saturday night after hundreds of people ransacked food shelves, assaulted some employees trying to get at food supplies and ripped open boxes and pallets of food before employees could restock shelves.
Welfare recipients in the county were issued emergency food stamp vouchers on Friday and Saturday by personnel with the Mississippi Department of Human Services. A rumor was subsequently spread in the city that the vouchers had to be used by midnight Saturday or they were no longer good.
That rumor sparked the panic buying by welfare recipients and created the problems for area merchants.
The vouchers were to accommodate for the downtime the department has had in dispensing welfare monies to Electronic Benefit Transfer accounts due power outages caused by Hurricane Katrina.
Wal-Mart was hit so hard that store officials finally closed the store at 11 p.m. Saturday due to the unsafe conditions in which shoppers had left aisles.
Eye witness accounts from several Saturday evening shoppers at Wal-Mart told of people grabbing food before store personnel could get pallets out of stock rooms.
Bread, meats, juices, water, boxed items and canned goods were hot items. Store employees had to be pulled from other departments just to handle the panic buying and clean up aisles, which were nearly impassable from dumped food items and broken cartons of items, which made the floors dangerous and unsafe to use.
On Sunday morning, scores of shopping carts could be seen near the customer service area where Saturday shoppers had left them following the frenzied activity of many of the shoppers.
None of the store associates or management talked to would go on record, but they did confirm that the store was closed on Saturday evening for safety reasons and because store personnel couldn't restock shelves fast enough.
Store personnel were still cleaning up the mess mid-morning Sunday while shelves were nearly bare of many items.
Art Rusk, manager at Bing's County Market on Mississippi 1 North, said this morning that his store did more business Saturday then all of the previous week.
Derrick Williams, a truck driver for Mrs. Baird's, restocked bread on shelves in Super Value, in the Goyer Shopping Center.
"They were snatching it up as fast as I could put in on Saturday," said Williams, who also had to make several emergency runs for several stores that had run out of bread over the weekend.
Kroger officials would not comment for the record, but there was confirmed at least one altercation on Saturday due to shopping requiring police involvement, as witnessed by a caller to the newspaper on Sunday.
Intellegent people buy food that can be cooked with water like rice and beans. After all, hurricanes and floods produce water. A 25 pound bag of rice and beans will carry you through a long period of time and can be easily stored BEFORE the necessity to use it.
I watch with amazement each time a hurricane approaches out coastline as the "store panic" starts. Not only the grocery stores but at the lumber yards too.
We do something most don't. At the begining of hurricane season we simply buy the "staples" such as beans and rice and store them. Wood for the windows was cut, numbered and stored many years ago...no panic run to the lumber yard or grocery store each time. Have you ever wondered just where all of that wood goes after the hurricane threat each year and why they have to buy it again each time they are threatened?
I was always taught that there is no such thing as an emergency or accident. Both are due to lack of planning or attention, with very few and rare exceptions.
Unfortunately, you have successive generations in a single family structure that have never sought employment.
this is the scene EVERY day at 5:30 at my friendly, neighborhood Kroger!
Is that a two headed baby on her shoulder? I know my eyes are old and weak but I can't figure out what that might be.
Bump
Why? Why are they giving tax payer money away like this. WTF.
Funny how evacuation orders never make it to the po' people, but BS rumors like this travel through the population in about 25 minutes.
:-)
ROTFLMBO!!
I keep 300# of rice and beans in the garage for things like this and I am north of Dallas. Cost to store? Maybe 100-150 bucks. Keeping it on a pallet means that in 5gal buckets with deoxygenators means that it will be there for several years.
I think of it as famine insurance.
The Decline and Fall of the Great Society.
Quick! What are the northern, western, southern, and eastern most states?
Quicker! Name a nine letter (common, everyday) word that has but one vowel (there is no "y" in this word).
"A little off topic, but if you live anywhere in a 'hurricane prone' area, and don't have hurricane supplies on hand, I'd suggest you stock up now"
That's good advice for folks. I'm not myself in a hurricane area, but when you consider other reasons for problems -- tornadoes, earthquakes, possible hard winter (haven't heard long-term forecasts yet), even another attack on the country (I pray won't happen) -- it's a good idea for everyone to be prepared as best as possible.
I said on another thread....might be time for lots of folks to move out of the big cities and into small towns or rural areas (pick the ones where the population is not on welfare).
Even suburbs of major cities are at risk. In cases of disaster or unrest, we see how these "thugs" were able to roam all over without being stopped.
We will be told that the people who did this were merely "undocumented shoppers".
maybe they should move.
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