"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=brkbarThis 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.