"As of noon Saturday, about 500 of San Antonio's 630 area gas stations were said to be out of fuel, according to motorists reporting to gas price tracker GasBuddy.com. By 7:30 p.m. that number had climbed to about 575."


http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Mayor-again-urges-calm-as-residents-continue-to-12169637.php?ipid=brkbar

This isn't funny anymore.


Both gas stations in Marion were without gas today. Also the one close to me on I-10.

Maybe it will start to ameliorate on Tuesday, and maybe it won't. To get people out of this mindset is going to take some doing.
They're really going to have to get San Antonio awash in gas.


My friend said, "the attendants at the gas stations I visited today were not too helpful. I asked them all if they knew when the next shipment of gas was scheduled to be delivered to their station and the consistent response I received was: *shrug*"

Maybe this will be a good wake up call for people though -- about preparedness in general, I mean. This could happen again, at any time, about anything -- money in the banks, groceries at the store, the value of the stock market, etc. and once a crisis or collapse is "in play" it's really too late to prepare.

The problem with gas, is you really can't store it. It only lasts for 3-6 months. And it's a pain to pour it into normal vehicles (riding mowers are a bit easier). Unless you have an expensive electric gas pump or something...but even then, the gas would still go bad.

The whole "just in time" thing is so fragile it's scary. I've personally bought Wal-mart or H-E-B out of various products, more times than I can count. Imagine what a hundred or 500 of me could do...

It all depends on a network of trucks to restock everything. If those trucks can't move for some reason (natural disaster, terrorist attack, epidemic, credit freeze-up, lack of fuel availability, etc.) everything those trucks re-stock begins to disappear from the retail dispensaries.

Anyhow, I've lived in this area for 13 years and on this earth for much longer, and I've never seen anything like this gas panic/outage. It's not just San Antonio, but the complete environs around it for a ??? mile radius. Do you see what's happening so far? When a truck shows up to deliver fuel, there are a bunch of hawks surrounding it ready to pounce. That gas station (in the article) was probably out of fuel again within the hour.

That's why I think it's going to take a massive, coordinated, concerted effort to drown all the stations in S.A. with gas all at once, so people stop panicking.


Because once you have 575 out of 630 stations without gas (which is the situation right now!), then those last few will quickly run out. And when everyone's out of gas, it's hard to "make headway" because any station with gas is going to be quickly swamped with a line of cars... (edited)

Anyhow, I'm still concerned because I need about 1.5 gallons of gas to get to work -- and another 1.5 gallons to get back. I'm extremely vulnerable in this situation. My round trip is 60 miles, and I only get about 20-23 to the gallon.


And if you really want to talk scary stuff, I'm surprised that no one in San Antonio is upset or frustrated that they can't get to work. I don't see how you can have a gas shortage longer than 2 days without "problems" (rioting, people loitering around with signs, people stuck home from work and up to no good, vandalism, stealing gas, etc.) (edited)

I mean, some people drive around on fumes -- or let's just say far from a full tank of gas.

The current situation in Houston is that there is technically only one gas rack where the tankers can load gas/diesel/ethanol and whatever additives are needed in it (they mix it as it's loaded). I takes 3+ hours waiting your turn to fill the tanker, and due to traffick, just as or EVEN LONGER to deliver it to the appropriate gas station! The other racks have lost power, and one seems to have it's computers fried, so there is no telling how long it will be before they are operational again. It could be another week, more at worst. I have a relative who is a tanker, so he's in it and ahould know... he's practically working 16 hours a day (hopefully not more).

I didn't look at those links provided, but with the situation as it is, how could you have very many stations filled in a short amount of time? Where is the gas coming from? Are there any other large racks in Texas that tanker from SanAntonio could go to besides Houston?


Well, Matthew, you're just going to have to start biking...

Here's the image of the day:

Talk about crazy! 55 gallon barrels? That's not easy to consume later, unless you have some kind of electric pump like a gas station. I can understand storing some extra gas in gas cans (maybe even a lot of gas cans), but 5 gallon buckets and 55 gallon barrels? That's insane.

That gas is going to splash all over the place, and ultimately be wasted.

I mean there's being prepared for a few days of "no gas for sale", and then there's writing off civilization. That's going a bit far at this point...

I just checked the "tracker.gasbuddy.com" process for updating a station's status, and it's a complete joke.

You click "update" for a given station, select "fuel" or "no fuel", and submit. And immediately the station's status is updated.

A piece of software could do that. I could write a program to select each one and say either "fuel" or "no fuel".
There is no CAPTCHA, no restriction, no login required, no nothing.

It's a joke.

But that's the beauty of a system by the people for the people! Hahaha

Do you have something against "freedom," Matthew? *sarcasm*

Just got back from a trip to San Antonio. All the gas stations I checked out were out of gas. We had no opportunities to buy gas.
Hoping it improves soon...

This started Thursday. We've been through Friday, Saturday, and now Sunday is almost over. Most stations around here still have no gas.

Edit: I just called the 2 gas stations in Marion, and the 2 gas stations on I-10 closest to me. All out of gas.

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I heard on the radio this morning that gas in southern Florida is all gone, stations empty. Who's giving correct info?
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Using the website from Matthew's post above, I found gas is reported available at a minority of stations, even Key West, Key Largo and Homestead, which are all at the southern tip of the state. Checking prices, they're still around $2.85 per gallon. Is that correct? Does Florida have price controls on gas or what?
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At the east end of Key Largo they have a bridge that's officially named "Bridge to Nowhere." Amazing. Need photos of that when Irma strikes.
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