Gas down in Knoxville, but gone in Nashville?

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Saturday September 20, 2008 · 9:03 AM PDT

2008/09/20 · 09:03

Greetings to the rest of the country, from ground zero for hurricane Ike. No, not from Texas, from Tennessee!

I have just returned from a week in Denver to find that the hurricane has taken a much stranger path after making landfall in Texas. Much to my surprise it has wiped out the gasoline supply here in middle Tennessee...

Now how in the frack did that happen?

The Tennessean reports this morning, according to AAA, that a full 85% of Nashville gas stations are out of gas, that's right...out of gas!

Coming home from the airport Thursday night, I thought it strange to see the little plastic grocery bags wrapped around gas pumps at one station. I recalled the reports from earlier in the week about Knoxville, where some were paying close to $5.00 per gallon, but that didn't play out the same here.

This is apparently something akin to the Y2K thing, where people all went out prior to Ike's landfall and filled up (before prices increased) and are now continually topping off their tanks to make sure that they have enough gas in case prices go back up, and in the process are exceeding the suppliers ability to deliver fuel to the stations. Maybe the local populace here has more SUVs and trucks (that have larger tanks)...but I have no data to support that theory. To my knowledge, even in Knoxville where the prices spiked much higher they are not having this problem now.

It was estimated, also according to the Tennessean, that one fourth of the Taxi fleet in Nashville was essentially parked yesterday because of a lack of gas. They are reporting, fortunately, that the government's private fueling stations (police, ambulances, etc.) are not affected, due to either luck or good planning (you really can't tell these days who to believe on emergency management, can you?).

Now, just think what could have happened if the municipal supplies were just as dry as the commercial supplies. I shudder to think of ambulances parked for lack of gas, but it very well could happen. Just think if Ike had stayed longer in the gulf, or if Josephine hadn't fizzled out and gave a 1-2 punch to the northern gulf region...

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