Grocery stores, gas stations see flood of people prepping for TS Erika

CAPE CORAL, Fla. – Grocery stores and gas stations across Southwest Florida have seen an increase in people as Tropical Storm Erika continues to head this way.

“Pretty much a whole bunch of canned foods like spaghetti, corn,” Blanca Lorenzana said.

“Oh, we’ve got water, we’ve got lanterns, batteries, you know we went down the list, did the whole kit list,” Van Vandusseldorp said.

WalMart and Publix are just a few places that are seeing an extra wave of people.

“I moved here from Indiana so this is my first potential hurricane,” Vandusseldorp said.

Publix says they have stocked and restocked their shelves of water cases throughout the day. Many people are also making trips to the gas station to top off their tanks.

“We’ve been quite busy. Considering we’re a fairly new store it’s been busy; everybody’s been filling up, getting lots of water,” Dee McGee, the store manager of the RaceTrac on Pine Island Road said. “We’ve been selling out of a lot of water, so we’ve stocked up on that.”

However, with TS Erika there’s still a lot of uncertainty on how bad it will affect Southwest Florida and several people say they’re not worrying just yet.

“I mean we’ve had a lot of tropical storms but until it gets to category 4.5 or 5, I’m not going to be worried about it,” Thunder Loredo said.

“Like I said, if it comes it comes, if it don’t, it don’t,” Carol Rivers said.