Pretty much everyone I know at the Shore filled their cars, bought gallons and gallons of water, a week or more of food supplies, bought batteries and boarded up their houses.
All the batteries were gone the Thursday before Sandy, by the way.
The main thing 90% of these people need is gas, not the other stuff.
You can only store so much gasoline in a home which could get crushed in a storm before you start creating a whole other set of hazards.
Do away with the absurd price gouging laws, and supplies will pour into the area. Also, higher prices cause people to conserve so that there is more for everybody.
Whenever government tries to make things “fair”, it always makes things worse. The market works when it is allowed to work. Prices are real, so keeping them artificially low causes shortages. One would think people could figure this out after all these centuries.
“You can only store so much gasoline in a home which could get crushed in a storm before you start creating a whole other set of hazards.”
That’s a good point. Thankfully our batteries held out until power came back on; I couldn’t imagine those people that are looking at spending the next few (cold) nights without power.
You have a point there. I’ve spent weeks snowbound so no one was going anywhere anyway, so no need for gasoline. We heat with wood (still do), no need for gas or electricity. I guess a generator would use gasoline, but the only thing I’d having a hard time doing without is Free Republic. City folks just have it differently.
Having just read about some folks trapped on Coney Island with no food or water, and saying it was worse than Katrina, guess my sympathy dropped a bit low.