‘It’s a madhouse!’ : Residents swamp stores for supplies.

Groceries, home shops see long lines for needed supplies.

Central Austin resident Natalie Wald usually visits the grocery store at the end of each work week. But Friday was a bit different. She grabbed extra supplies this time around: more bottled water, milk and a trove of batteries for flashlights.

“I had to change my grocery list a bit,” Wald, 34, said at an H-E-B grocery store near the University of Texas campus. “You always want to be prepared for any sort of storm that comes through. We need to prepare for flooding. We have a creek in our backyard. Biblical-type rain, they’re saying.”

Throughout Central and South Texas, shoppers were stocking up on food, water and other supplies in preparation for Hurricane Harvey, which by Friday evening had become a Category 4 hurricane was it raking the coast near Corpus Christi.

The threat of Harvey packed some stores as major grocery chains like San Antonio-based H-E-B scrambled to fill the need.

“H-E-B has a disaster response team that works 365 days a year for times like this,” H-E-B spokeswoman Leslie Sweet said. “We’ve been active now for several days planning to take care of our customers, our stores and our communities. We continue to stay in close contact with the Central Texas Food Bank, city of Austin and the local Red Cross officials.”

H-E-B, the state’s largest private employer and the dominant grocer in Central Texas, has assembled mobile kitchens, pharmacies and other response teams, and it sent trailer loads of water to every South Texas food bank, Sweet said. As of Friday afternoon, the company had closed about 45 of its stores statewide, but none in Central Texas. Walmart, the nation’s largest grocery chain, had 21 stores closed in Texas as of Friday afternoon in response to Harvey.

Long lines were reported at H-E-B stores from Central Austin to Bastrop and Kyle, where signs limited customers to four 24-packs of water or four gallon-plus bottles of water.

Atlanta-based Home Depot said Friday that it was restocking its stores that are in the path of Hurricane Harvey as fast as it could with plywood, generators, water and other emergency supplies.

Home Depot has about 18 stores in the Austin area. Five of the company’s stores are in the direct path of the storm near Corpus Christi, with none of them closed as of Friday afternoon.

At some stores in Austin, people were distressed.

“It’s a madhouse in there!” Jane Hack yelled as she left the H-E-B Plus store in Kyle on Friday afternoon.

Inside, lines stacked into shopping aisles, where customers swarmed the bottled water area as workers hustled to restock supplies, attempting to prevent the empty-shelves scenes noted in stores in areas such as Houston.

Others, however, wondered why people were so concerned. Austin, they pointed out, is not in the direct path of the hurricane.

“I could understand if this was Corpus Christi or Galveston, but seriously?” 37-yearold Joe Flowers said at the Kyle H-E-B Plus store. “There were people literally running around,” he added, before calling the scene at the store “insane.”

Still, some people near waterways throughout the Austin area braced for the worst.

At the Home Depot in Kyle, employees described customers as desperate for some supplies.

The store at one point sold 224 sandbags in 1½ hours, associate Chris Johnson said. Some customers, coming from places as far away as Corpus Christi, had also stopped to buy loads of plywood.

“People were parking where you’re supposed to exit” under an awning, Johnson said. “People were getting mad. People were getting crazy.”