I had a number of errands to run yesterday during preschool hours.  After making it through the first few with no issues, I arrived at Star Market to discover they (along with a fairly good sized chunk of town) had lost power.  I’m guessing it was within 15 minutes of my arrival because while some perishables had been covered/moved they were still in scramble mode to deal with the rest.  And, according to at least one person, were looking at two hours before the power came back on.

I only needed a small number of items – mostly perishables actually – which they were probably happy I took off their hands.  So, I gathered my things wondering why the store wasn’t actually closed; what was going on at checkout.  To my surprise the registers were working.  I learned that they had a one hour backup each so by dividing up the registers they could stay open for a while.

On the one had I found it very odd that the registers were working and yet there didn’t seem to be a backup for all the freezer/refrigerator cases.  On the other hand, I realize it would be expensive to install generators at every store.  I don’t envy the managers who were making decisions about what to move to the rear deep freezes, which presumably would stay cold longest vs what to hope would be ok for a power outage of unknown duration.  I still remember when we had a week long power outage a few years back seeing the trucks in front of the grocery store to take away the loads and loads of spoiled food and the week or so it took for them to restock.