After Rita, Store Had Necessities of Life in Stock

ORANGE, Texas -- A line of pickups jammed the McCoy’s Building Supply Center parking lot here Wednesday, well before the store opened at 6:30 am.

Among those waiting: five members of the Hogg family, who slept in their truck Tuesday night with the air conditioning and the engine running because their home was without electricity and because they didn’t want to open the windows because of mosquitoes.

The Hoggs bought two portable electric generators, four fans, four 5-gallon fuel containers, one chain saw and two cases of water. Workers at McCoy’s also gave Katie Hogg, who turned 2 on Tuesday, an impromptu birthday party.

This area of East Texas, six miles from the Louisiana state line, was hard hit by Hurricane Rita.

Since the storm’s arrival Saturday, residents have been struggling to buy food as well as construction supplies to repair their homes.

“Building materials are essential, next to food and water,” said David Strom, McCoy’s regional manager for East Texas.

So even before Red Cross or Federal Emergency Management Agency crews made their rounds here, Strom led a “SWAT” team of 16 volunteers from McCoy’s headquarters in San Marcos, Texas, 275 miles away, to open the damaged store in Orange.

His crew brought a 500-gallon diesel-powered generator to provide electricity for the store, plus plenty of chain saws, portable generators, gas cans, water and other building materials to fill the store’s shelves.

By dawn Monday, a large spray-painted “Open” sign was in front of McCoy’s next to Interstate 10, even as a vast swath of the Gulf Coast was without power and water.

The payback was immediate. As the only building supply store in town that was open Monday morning, McCoy’s had, by Tuesday, sold 100 generators at $800 apiece, helping the Orange store post a one-day sales record for the chain.

“We are very lucky to have a store like this,” said Jerry Moore, a construction worker who bought a chain saw to cut away a tree that was blocking the driveway to his mother’s house.

Nearby, a Home Depot store opened Tuesday with a skeletal crew that let in only a few people at a time.

For family-owned McCoy’s, a chain of 87 stores in five states, the brisk sales week is the clearest sign of an aggressive recovery plan. “We’re trying to help our customers restore their lives as quickly as possible,” said Darryl White, McCoy’s security specialist.

McCoy’s executives began planning to assemble a SWAT team a week before Hurricane Rita hit, hoping not to repeat the mistake it made with Hurricane Katrina.

The company hadn’t expected that its stores would be damaged, but Katrina made it 136 miles inland to a McCoy’s in Laurel, Miss. It took three days to reopen that store.

So last week, as Rita barreled toward Texas, Strom rented two U-Haul trucks and filled them with food and supplies for his makeshift crew.

He also scrambled to get five camping trailers so his volunteer workers would have a place to sleep.

On Friday night, it appeared that McCoy’s Orange store would be hit hardest.

By Saturday afternoon, Strom and his caravan were on the road: five pickup trucks pulling five trailers. In addition to a dozen 5-gallon containers of fuel for the trucks, they brought five portable generators and 18 chests filled with food, water and ice to feed their staff for about a week.

About 18 hours after Hurricane Rita had scourged the area, Strom’s convoy pulled into the driveway of the tattered building supplies store.

They set up in McCoy’s Orange parking lot, now an encampment with a row of campers, a picnic table and a charcoal grill.

When the store opened Monday, only two of its 14 regular employees showed up because their homes were damaged or because they had to evacuate to another town. That left the store in the hands of volunteers, who are mostly senior officials at McCoy’s corporate office.

Local employees who did make it to work were allowed to sleep in the store, along with contractors hired to repair the store.

But security had to be heightened in the parking lot. A 5-foot-high horse corral was set up around the encampment and fuel containers were covered with tarp.

That’s because when Ronnie Byrd, a McCoy’s volunteer, stopped to get some coffee in Baytown, just east of Orange, a crowd surrounded his pickup truck and began picking off filled gas containers one by one.

When he tried to drive away, a man stood in front of his truck until all the 5-gallon containers had been pilfered from the trailer.

“We’re not going to let that happen again,” said White, of McCoy’s security. A retired Texas highway trooper, he carries a 9-millimeter pistol on his hip and has been keeping an eye out for potential looters.

Still, a steady stream of customers arrived at the store. They included several Army soldiers who bought pipes, wiring and duct tape for reconstruction work.

“It’s amazing that this place is open,” said Sgt. James Weihe, who bought a chain saw for his artillery unit, which has been helping clear roads nearby.