In the Hunt for Necessities, Rumors Fly and Lines Crawl
By KATE ZERNIKE
The New York Times
September 2, 2005
GULFPORT, Miss., Sept. 1 - Emile Ozerden drove 70 miles Wednesday night on a tip that there was gas in Mobile, only to discover that the stations with gas had no power to pump it. When she finally found fuel, in Biloxi, she couldn't wait - the line was too long, and she feared she would miss curfew here.
At 6 a.m. Thursday, as soon as curfew broke, she started out for ice and water. She went first to the mall, where the police told her to go to the parking lot at Hoods; she waited in line there for more than an hour, only to be told that the trucks would be another four hours. She was driving to her brother's house when she saw an emergency supply truck under police escort doling out bags of ice and water along Pass Road.
"You see a white truck, follow it!" said Howard Waugh, her neighbor in the line where she now waited with a cooler and her two small children.
Life for them and others here on the devastated coast of Mississippi has become a giant scavenger hunt for the most basic necessities. With debris covering streets, no electricity and most stores closed, lines several miles long formed for gasoline, for food, for water and ice that often did not arrive as promised. People lined up for medicine and for generators and at banks, because the few places that were open were only taking cash, and without phone signals, A.T.M.'s were not working.
When a couple of cellphone stores reopened to offer free phone calls, lines appeared there, too. Radio stations gave frequent clues: "The B.P. near the truck stop just got a truck of gas," one announced Thursday afternoon. After a false report Wednesday morning, several police cars drove with bullhorns along a milelong line of cars near the Wal-Mart on Route 49. "Wal-Mart is not open! Turn around!" they boomed. "Wal-Mart is not open!"
Thursday, Chasity Smith had come to the bank with her sister-in-law to get in line and saw that a Domino's pizza had opened, so she dropped her sister-in-law to get food for the 18 people - five families - living in her mother-in-law's three-bedroom house. Within 10 minutes 30 people were lined up there..
Closer to Mobile, more stores were open. But for gas there were lines across the entire southern part of the state - if there was gas at all. People ran out of gas waiting to get gas.
At the Kangaroo gas station here, Mark Ostoits, the division director for stations in the area, said he had pushed 20 cars in the past three hours. Of 30 stations in the region, he said, this was the only one open.
"People are trying to cut in line, but other people report them and we kick them out," Mr. Ostoits said. "Everybody's got to be patient."
Water was the most sought-after necessity. But other things, too, were hard to find.
Catherine Nickoles was in line with her 6-month-old son and her mother, Cherri, at a CVS drugstore, waiting to buy formula. "He hasn't had anything but water since Tuesday night," Catherine Nickoles said. The line inched along as the manager let in customers one by one, telling each they had just five minutes to buy what they wanted in the darkened store. Five hours later, the Nickoles had their formula.
With temperatures rising, people bought umbrellas to shield themselves for the long waits. But tempers were running high. At the Federal Emergency Management Agency distribution center on Pass Road, fights broke out around 8:30 a.m., after people in a line that had been forming since 5 a.m. were told that trucks would not be there until 10. The city pulled the police off street patrol to do crowd control.
Among many people there was desperation. "What's this for?" JoAnn Smith, a nurse's assistant asked, running up to the line at CVS. "I need some gas. Where can I find gas?"
Told that there was some in Biloxi, she said, "I don't have enough to get there."
Jim Fullilove, 52, had come to CVS at 7:30 a.m. after the gas line he had tried to get into backed up onto the Interstate. He thought he would fill a prescription, but when the store opened two hours later he was told it was not dispensing any.
"I don't need anything else," Mr. Fullilove said, "but I've been in line so long I'm going to get some stuff anyway. Perhaps some bug repellent."
At Lowe's home improvement store, Jim Scaies was about to go inside to buy a generator after waiting in line for two hours. The day before he had spent $4.25 a gallon for gas at a station that was offering only racing fuel. But he was happy because along the way he saw a store with signs saying: Free Phone Calls. So he stopped and called his son in New York to tell him he was all right.
"In Britain they say people will start a queue behind anyone who stops on the sidewalk," Mr. Scaies said. "It's become like that here. You see somebody, you get in line to see what they've got."
Others did not bother to wait in line, climbing through blown-out windows and over plywood into stores to loot them. At Gulfport Discount Cigarettes, where looters rushed out with cases of water, soda and cigarettes, the manager had told the police not to stop them. Chris Baker, a city police officer, said, "He said there's no sense spending our time arresting them. Everything's a complete loss anyway."
Others had less patience with such behavior. The state's insurance commissioner, George Dale, said on the radio Tuesday that he believed looters should be shot. Others agreed. "Owner In Store W/Gun," read a sign outside Rodeo's Boot Outlet, a cavernous store with the front blown off.
Radio stations, some of them simply running the audio of television news coverage that few people had power to watch, were the source of most of the tips, and some of the misinformation. "We are dispensing reliable information," one station said. "However, things can hold up trucks. Please be patient."
But people were grumbling that many of the reports were wrong. "TV and radio are just feeding the rumors," grumbled Mr. Fullilove, in line at CVS.
Still, he was not inclined to disregard them completely. "The Church of God on 29th is going to give free meals, ice and water," he said. "At least they said." |
