Hurricane Beryl’s aftermath creates long lines at gas stations, grocery stores and restaurants in Houston

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Businesses that are open in the Houston area are seeing long lines of people looking for essentials, like groceries, gas and hot meals.

Cars lined the streets outside businesses serving customers on Tuesday.

Susan Balderas was waiting in line at a gas station at Buffalo Speedway and the Southwest Freeway access road. It was the second place she went to fill up.

“I took advantage of my lunch break to get gas, because in the area where I live there are still a lot of power outages,” Balderas said. “The gas stations are out of order. There are long lines everywhere.”

James Puckett also waited in line, but said he’d seen worse lines on the street.

Others parked in the parking lots of closed gas stations, looking to fill their tanks and gas cans.

While some turned to restaurants for a hot meal, others looked for open grocery stores.

HEB said all of its stores are open during regular business hours. Some may have limited availability for delivery and curbside pickup.

A Kroger spokesperson said all of their stores are open, with the following exceptions:

• 9703 Barker Cypress Road, Cypress, TX 77433
• 360 FM 1960 West, Houston, Texas 77090
• 8000 Research Forest Drive, The Woodlands, Texas 77380
• 6767 Spencer Highway, Pasadena, TX 77505
• 2619 Red Bluff Road, Pasadena, TX 77506

The Kroger store on North Shepherd in The Heights remained open throughout the storm, according to manager Jeff Bailey.

He said they lost power during the storm and switched to their backup generator, which partially powers the facility.

With no power, Bailey said they’ve had to throw out all their frozen and refrigerated food for safety reasons.

“I’m very proud of our team,” Bailey said. “We’re getting everything back in order and we’re here to help the neighborhood. We have plenty of water, plenty of bread, plenty of batteries, coolers, every essential you can think of. Canned goods, ice.”

Lisa New visited the Kroger in North Shepherd Tuesday afternoon. She said she and her family still don’t have power and are stressed and thirsty. She had a cart full of juice.

“(Monday) was the scariest day of my life,” New said emotionally. “Huge trees fell everywhere.”

She hugged Bailey while she was shopping and expressed her gratitude for the store being open.

“I feel like they’ve done a fantastic job of restocking, and it’s not like COVID where everything is just being cleared out,” New said. “I think people are just taking what they need, hoping the power outage will only last a few days and not trying to empty the store.”

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