POOLER, Ga. (WSAV)—Workers are on strike at the Port of Savannah indefinitely, and many people are still dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
These two events combined, it seems, had people flooding into grocery stores on Tuesday, buying some of them out.
“I’m just getting back in town actually. Just got power back yesterday, so just kinda throwing stuff away and buying new stuff,” Kentrell Burgess, a shopper at Walmart in Pooler, said about his trip to the store.
Some local shoppers told News 3 the current situation left them feeling unsure that they’d have access to everyday necessities.
“I heard the ports were going on strike, so I figured everybody else would probably be doing the same thing, and I needed to come shop too,” Cassidy Scruggs, another shopper said.
It seems like more than a few people had the same idea
“It probably took about 45 minutes just to sit in the line and get checked out, so there’s definitely a lot of people,” Scruggs said. “It wasn’t as lowly stocked as I thought it would be, but definitely not a big variety of options on meat. There’s absolutely no bread at all.”
Shoppers said the Pooler Walmart was completely out of bottled water and that stores in some of the surrounding areas have even less of the merchandise they’re looking for.
We asked experts if a run on the stores is really necessary.
They said no.
“I don’t doubt that there are some folks who may feel some fear or trepidation about the ports being shut down, but, realistically, I don’t think it’ll have a significant or even a noticeable effect on their access to goods and services or groceries,” Professor of Economics at Georgia Southern University Michael Toma said.
Toma said that that the strike could certainly have an impact on our local economy but not in the way some might assume.
“It’s more of an indirect effect – those individuals whose employment depends on the operation of the port,” Toma said. “That’s not only the folks loading and unloading cargo at the port. It’s also related to the trucking and transportation and the warehousing industry around in the region. So, it’s a bigger picture I think on the logistics industry in Savannah that employs on the order of about 19,000 people.”
Toma did tell News 3 some encouraging news though.
“We are fortunate that we have other stabilizing factors or other pistons to our economic engine if you want to think about it like that, and if the port piston in our economic engine misfires for a month or two, that’s okay,” Toma said. “Our economy will still function fine and sound.”
