SYRACUSE -- As Central New Yorkers tried to stay ahead of Hurricane Sandy, workers at the Wegmans in Dewitt fought a losing battle, as the bottles of water they stocked on the shelves came down nearly as fast as they went up.
While most say they were not too concerned, but just being cautious, empty shelves still ruled the bottled water aisle, a sign of a storm brewing.
It was an all too familiar sight for Sheila Mains, a Florida resident who felt the impact of Sandy just a couple days ago as the storm spun off the coast. She said the atmosphere was anything but calm.
"Chaos...chaos," Mains said. "We actually took off Thursday and went through some real turbulence, it was just moving in off the coast so we got out of there just in time."
With Sandy going a little bit slower, Mains beat the storm up the coast, but she was also met by empty shelves in grocery stores, something she saw down in Florida as well.
"Everybody was stocking up on water because of Hurricane Sandy, and this is what our shelves look like, and here I am in Syracuse, New York, and we're out of water," Mains said.
But water is not the only supply that is leaving bare shelves, all local Lowe's Home Improvement and Home Depot stores are out of generators.
"Our distribution center has allocated a lot of the generators to all the locations that are going to get hit the worst," Lowe's in Clay Assistant Store Manager Don Sandford, said. "We're going to get some more, but they're going to be sending them out to the places that really get hit."
Those stores still have batteries, flashlights, radios and other emergency supplies still available, and the American Red Cross is advising Central New Yorkers to stock up in case the power goes out for longer than expected.
