Many stories surround gas shortage

The line started to form when the QuikTrip ran out of premium and mid-grade. Seven cars, 12 cars, 20: Soon they trailed out of the parking lot and tied up a lane of traffic on Ga. 92 in Woodstock.

It was like a table full of brothers and sisters elbowing over the last piece of pie – or in this case, the remaining regular unleaded.

“Look at them,” said Niki Rogers of Woodstock, as she pulled out of the Dunkin’ Donuts next door with her morning coffee. “It’s all the people who clean out the bread and milk when we have a storm.”

She glanced at her gauge – almost full – and laughed. “I was half-tempted to top it off myself, and I probably don’t need more than a gallon.”

Human nature may be as much to blame for metro Atlanta’s Great Gas-Out as struggling pipelines and hurricane-damaged refineries on the Gulf.

The drama of supply and demand – real and perceived – played out Wednesday morning at a 24-pump QT in Cherokee County as it has across the area for the past 2 1/2 weeks. But on this day, when the supply finally gave out, a station clerk admitted things weren’t exactly as they seemed.

At 9:30 a.m., Allen Holsonbake and another employee blocked off one entrance to the convenience store to make it harder to break in line and started directing traffic to the fueling bays.

“We have gas,” Holsonbake said, motioning for an Altima to pull in behind a Tahoe. “People are just buying it too fast. Ninety percent of them have over half a tank. They’re topping off.”

Some of the customers were more than topping off. They were filling every sort of container in an effort to create their own Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

“I didn’t know they made a 10-gallon gas can until all this started,” Holsonbake said.

Many people aren’t hoarding, of course. Holsonbake figures he’s helped push at least a dozen cars into the parking lot when they ran out of gas waiting for gas.

Joseph Schwartz of Kennesaw was somewhere between the extremes. But as he sat in line out on the highway, the psychologist conceded that he normally wouldn’t wait 20 minutes to fill up his fuel-efficient Prius when it still had a quarter of a tank left.

“You believe what you see in the news and you don’t want to run out, so you get anxious,” he explained. “Maybe I shouldn’t say anxious. You get stressed out and concerned.”

His professional opinion?

“This gas thing is driving us crazy.”

Schwartz experienced the craziness earlier in the week when a car struck his Prius and scraped the fender. The police officer on the scene didn’t seem too interested in writing up the accident.

“He said he had to go break up a fight at a gas station,” Schwartz said.

While no one has committed unleaded assault at this QT, employees have seen almost every other type of behavior during the fuel shortage.

“We’ve had fights and shouting matches and people breaking in line,” Holsonbake said. “I heard somewhere that people themselves are smart, but in a group they can become panicky animals. I believe it.”

Just then, a van tried to bypass the queue and jump in line at the pumps. Holsonbake spotted the ploy, caught the driver’s eye and made a slashing motion across his neck, as if to say, “I saw you cut.” He pointed to the exit like an umpire ejecting a foul-mouthed manager. The van skulked away.

For the most part, though, the customers were orderly this morning. The clerk expected it to stay that way as long as the supply held out.

“I think we’ve got two hours of regular left,” he predicted.

He was wrong.

A few minutes later, at 10:22 a.m., the pumps abruptly stopped working. Customers swiped cards and punched buttons and squeezed nozzles, but nothing happened. A few cursed and sighed, then moved on in resignation, forming a line to exit the parking lot as they had lined up to enter. It was like a school of fish turning 180 degrees as one.

“All of a sudden, we’re a ghost town,” Holsonbake said, as he went from pump to pump bagging the nozzles like they were so many stiffs in a morgue – “CSI Petroleum.”

He knew the pumps would come back to life when another tanker arrived, followed inevitably by a caravan of cars and another fueling frenzy.

In the meantime, he confided some inside information.

“We’re not totally out of gas. The pumps automatically shut off when they reach 1,000 gallons. We have to keep some on hand for emergency vehicles.”

Not that he wanted to announce it over the speakers just then. There was still a line of cars leaving.