“The Evil Market” Comes To The Rescue: Hurricane Preparation Is A Science For Walmart, Home Depot
By Mark Perry updated August 27, 2011
A convoy of Walmart trucks waited to enter New Orleans in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina.
You'll notice the state cops are keeping them out below. They also kept the Salvation Army from Houston from entering NO as well. I recall reading this in the newspaper. Right after that, the shit storm about how terrible Bush was handling stuff started in the media.
NPR — “Forecasters don’t expect Hurricane Irene to make landfall until Saturday. But for nearly a week now, big-box retailers like Walmart and Home Depot have been getting ready.
They’ve deployed hundreds of trucks carrying everything from plywood to Pop-Tarts to stores in the storm’s path. It’s all possible because these retailers have turned hurricane preparation into a science — one that government emergency agencies have begun to embrace.
At Home Depot’s Hurricane Command Center in Atlanta, for example, about 100 associates have been trying to anticipate how Irene will affect its East Coast stores from the Carolinas to New York. At times like this, the Command Center looks much like NASA Mission Control during a shuttle launch, says Russ Householder, the company’s emergency-response captain.
Walmart is able to anticipate surges in demand during emergencies by using a huge historical database of sales from each store as well as sophisticated predictive techniques, says Mike Cooper, Walmart’s head of emergency management.
He says that with Irene on the way, that system is helping them allocate things like batteries, ready-to-eat foods and cleaning supplies to areas in the storm’s path. Walmart also has the advantage of having a staff meteorologist, Cooper says.”
dailymarkets.com
Hurricane Irene and Walmart’s staff meteorologist by Eileen Norcross on August 27, 2011
in City Life, Federalism, Institutions
A very interesting piece from NPR. Big-box retailers began their hurricane prep well before Hurricane Irene was predicted to make landfall. Home Depot’s Command Central, which looks, “much like NASA Mission Control during a shuttle launch” has been busy anticipating the storm’s effects along the East Cost. Walmart has its own staff meteorologist. This pre-hurricane prep – which actually begins before hurricane season – is why the shelves were stocked with emergency generators in Puerto Rico and available for customers when the electricity went out.
Economist Steven Horwitz studied the response of Walmart after Hurricane Katrina. His research – part of the Mercatus Center’s Hurricane Katrina project – shows that Walmart was able to respond more adeptly and quickly than FEMA and state emergency services, providing people with basic necessities including medicines (in some cases, local store managers gave supplies away to those in need). Not only are they on the ground and in the community, their very business is to respond to people’s needs and wants quickly and on a daily basis.
Since Katrina, FEMA has been studying ways to work more closely with the private sector. Interestingly, Horwitz found that the U.S. Coast Guard and local emergencies services were also able to respond more quickly than FEMA during Katrina for a similar reason: they are are decentralized and closer to the ground.
Here is Professor Horwitz discussing Walmart’s Katrina’ response:
neighborhoodeffects.mercatus.org
Being a NYT reader, you're not very well informed, of course. It's really common knowledge that these well run private businesses are better at disaster planning and logistics management than federal bureaucracies.
|
