Food, Supplies in High Demand as Hurricane Frenzy Builds

Hurricane Irene may still be a few days away, but the frenzy has already begun as people are stocking up on food and supplies.

Over at in Miller Place, packs of water bottles and other non-perishables are flying off the shelves

"We’ve been extremely busy the last two days,” said store manager Marty McDonough. "People are picking up water, bread, things that aren’t going to be affected if we lose power. It’s only getting worse, anytime there’s any kind of weather event or holiday we are affected...people don’t want to be without food.

The surge in demand has caused the store to increase its supplies as some products are targeted.

"We’ve bulked up the water section, bread section, most of the non-perishables that traditionally don’t get hit hard are getting hit hard," he said.

We’ve been adding onto the trucks, bringing in extra help, whatever products we can get our hands on. We’ll start barreling in ice on the weekend in the event we do lose power. People have coolers and will look to preserve whatever they can."

At in Miller Place, patrons are wished a “Happy Hurricane” as they leave the store, which has gotten many calls for generators, something they can’t carry in such a small store.

“There were people outside of the store this morning,” the manager, who didn’t wish to give his name, said. “We open at 8 a.m. and there were people here about a quarter of. We started running out of flashlights yesterday. We put in an emergency order last night but I have no idea when it’s getting here.”

It was the same story at as flashlights were sold out and batteries were all but gone.

"It started early and built to a frenzy," said store owner Bill LaPurka. "We ran out of D batteries, which is our most popular one. Our distributor Ace is all out of flashlights totally...lanterns, gone. We got cleaned out."

The store is expecting to get batteries in tomorrow.