Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.
Finding fresh foods for Thanksgiving has been a chore for shoppers as grocery stores and supermarkets struggle with power outages caused by Hurricane Iwa.
“We’ve got real problems,” said Wesley Park, Gem’s Kapalama grocery department manager.
The store’s main problem — like most local supermarkets — was its off and on electricity. The “rolling blackouts” provided both the headaches and the aspirin — enough outages to aggravate, but occasional electricity to keep food from going bad.
As of late yesterday afternoon the Kapalama store had lost all electricity five times. The blackouts averaged a half-hour to 45 minutes.
Fearing spoilage, employees loaded the ice cream, frozen turkeys and fresh meats into a large refrigerator in the back.
“We just put it in there and pray,” Park said. “If the electricity is out for three or four hours, the stuff will start to spoil.”
By yesterday afternoon, some frozen foods already had been tossed out.
Like some markets, the Gem store had an employee stay at the story all night Tuesday to keep an eye on the compressors which run about everything. When the electricity goes, the compressors have to be shut down to prevent them from blowing up when the power comes back.
All of the electricity problems couldn’t have come at a much worse time.
The day before Thanksgiving is usually one of the biggest days for supermarkets.
“It definitely hurt our sales,” Park said.
By late afternoon, several Foodland Super Markets had loaded up their frozen goods and other perishables into large refrigerated containers. The containers were hauled back to the main warehouse and plugged in.
The worst hit Foodland stores were Kaneohe, Kailua, Mililani, Pupukea and Ewa.
“We’re trying to stay open by letting a few people in at a time and checking them out by hand calculators,” said Roy Kirihara, an accountant at Foodland’s district office.
