Darlington Walmart weathers first big storm event
Marzette Brunson, produce manager at the Darlington Walmart Supercenter, pitches in to help restock the freezer section which was cleared out due to Hurricane Matthew.
Photo by Samantha Lyles
By Samantha Lyles, Staff Writer, slyles@newsandpress.net
Even though the Darlington Walmart Supercenter only opened this past spring, locals have come to rely on the big box store for quick trips to fetch necessary supplies, so when Hurricane Matthew sent residents scrambling for necessities, store manager Kevin Lane and his team tried their best to keep the doors open for as long as possible, and worked around the clock to re-open during the aftermath.
“Believe it or not, I had forty associates show up to work that day. Forty. Some of the other stores had maybe six to ten people and could hardly open,” Lane says, noting that his team came ready to help as Matthew moved inland on the morning of Saturday, October 8.
As weather warnings came down from corporate headquarters, Walmart employees secured the parking lot, chaining up cart corrals and making sure no outdoor items could blow loose in high winds. Employees and management had meetings every two hours, planning for power outages and store closings. Eventually, when word of power outages and street flooding began to spread, Lane sent many of those associates home to tend to their families and properties.
Around mid-day, the store’s power flickered a few times and finally went out completely around 1:30 that afternoon. The associates who stayed to help sprang into action, using emergency preparedness kits to secure and insulate refrigeration units just in case the electricity returned quickly. That did not happen, of course, so Lane and his team carefully monitored the temperature in these cases.
“You can keep it out there for four hours, then you have to start temping it. If it gets above fifty degrees, you have to throw it away,” says Lane.
He notified the Walmart Emergency Operations Center, which sent a refrigerated trailer and a generator (which had mechanical troubles, and the mechanic was stranded in Wilmington until Sunday). Lane and three employees managed to save the meat case, which they loaded buggy by buggy into the refrigeration truck. But the freezer section, dairy, and deli sections suffered heavy losses, estimated in the high five-figure range.
“I was able to save maybe thirty percent of it and lost maybe seventy percent,” says Lane.
When the generator went online Sunday around 2:30 p.m., the store was once again fully powered. Lane opened the doors to small groups of customers who were escorted through the store to speedily find the items they needed to survive the power outage. Generators, propane, charcoal and lighter fluid, bottled water and bagged ice all sold as quickly and needed frequent replenishing right up until the store closed near the 7 p.m. curfew.
Walmart opened charging stations up front where visitors could charge their cell phones and other crucial electronics, and the pharmacy hosted patients who required electricity to take breathing treatments. Crews of Duke Energy linemen began rolling in to work the widespread power outages, and they were fed meals and given damaged stock (like cases of soda or water with missing bottles). Lane notes that the linemen bought a lot of pillows and blankets because they were sleeping in their cabs and on floors during the hectic recovery period. Walmart also donated fuel cards to emergency responders who needed to travel a bit to find fuel for their work vehicles.
Twenty-five associates from other Walmarts came in Sunday to augment the store crew, and everyone went to work scanning thousands of items deemed unsalable, throwing the ruined stock away, and placing orders for replacements. Walmart trucks rolled in that same day, and by Wednesday, October 13 the store was almost back to normal.
Lane says he is very proud of the hard work and dedication shown by the Darlington Walmart associates, and he hopes that their efforts to provide needed items and services during and after the storm helped ease some of the strain on their friends and neighbors.
“All the customers thanked us for getting open so fast…but we’re managed down from the Emergency Operations Center, and the main thing they told us is to try and be there for your community,” says Lane.