HOUSTON — Business was heavy yesterday at area stores here as forecasters predicted Hurricane Ike might hit the city sometime today. Randalls, a division of Safeway, shut down two stores on the Texas coast yesterday after authorities issued mandatory evacuation orders, and H.E. Butt Grocery Co. was "assessing store closings" in coastal areas as the storm neared landfall, a spokeswoman told SN. Without such orders, supermarkets and pharmacies are considered essential and are encouraged to remain open, local sources told SN. A spokesman for Kroger here said its stores have been keeping inventories high on canned goods, bread, batteries, water and other essentials all week, "and business picked up early [yesterday] when the hurricane center predicted Ike was likely to hit southwest of Houston," he said. Kroger has been encouraging shoppers to stock up on canned goods, batteries and water since August, when hurricane season began, the spokesman said, "and anything that isn't used can be returned as part of our hurricane preparedness guarantee, which we introduced last year," he explained. The H-E-B spokeswoman said her company's stores were fully stocked with products consumers were looking for last week "because we hold special hurricane inventory at several warehouses, and we're ready to ship that to the stores as needed on a moment's notice."
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