Gas shortage fuels anxiety at UGA-‘Bama game

Tommy Drew was running on fumes by the time he got to Athens from his hometown of Virginia Beach, Va., for Saturday night’s University of Georgia-Alabama game.

“I tried to gas up in Augusta, but there was no gas there,” said Drew, who has been on a fuel hunt since arriving in Athens on Friday.

“We heard at the hotel there was no gas in Athens. Then we heard Wal-Mart had some. The pump ran out when we were trying to fill up. I had to go across the street to Shell, where they only had Hi-Test.”

That frustration and desperation was shared this weekend by motorists throughout North Georgia. Weeks after Hurricane Ike shut down Gulf Coast refineries and dried up interstate pipelines, the crunch continued, hitting hardest in Atlanta, Nashville and the Carolinas, including the Charlotte area and mountain towns to the west.

But no mere gas shortage can slow down a Georgia Bulldog or a Crimson Tide fan. As “Dawg Fan” said on an AJC message board on the gas shortage: “I will be in Sanford Stadium on Saturday if I have to walk to Athens and back.”

In Athens, some stations were out of gas Saturday afternoon, while others had fuel available. At a filling station in east Athens, about five miles from Sanford Stadium, several cars and SUVs with Georgia flags were being filled up, with no wait. Up the street, another station had plastic bags covering all of its pump nozzles.

Freddie Collins, an Alabama fan, drove with a friend 4 1/2 hours to Athens from his home in Greenville, Tenn.

“Yeah I thought about it [not coming],” Collins admitted. “I’d heard about the gas problem, and we ran out back home last week. But the lure of the game is what did it for us. We wanted to come see a great ball game.”

Anticipating the drive to Athens, Harold Miller, 45, drove around for about an hour on Friday night looking for gas around his Dunwoody neighborhood.

“I couldn’t find anything,” Miller said. “Then I got up this morning and a station near our house had gas. There was only about a 15-minute wait.”

He paid $4.29 a gallon.

Saturday afternoon, tailgaters in the Sanford parking lot were sharing gas stories like war stories.

Eric Larson, 44, of Peachtree Corners, overheard Miller and bragged he got his gas for $4.09 after finding a station near his home and waiting 45 minutes.

They both drive SUVs

Tony Buchanan, an Alabama fan wearing a Bear Bryant-type houndstooth cap, was worried about the game, not gas.

“Chattanooga is not that bad,” Buchanan said. “I filled up and I can make it here and back on a tank. I didn’t even think about it.”

Bob Richardson of Louisville, an 82-year-old Alabama fan – Class of ‘50 – also gassed up in Chattanooga. He figured he had just enough to get back to that Tennessee city after the game.

Did he think about skipping it? “No, not at all. I’ve only missed

15 games, home and away, since 1971.”

Justin Arnette, a Georgia fan from Winder, said his Chevy 2500 pick-up truck “was sputtering when I pulled into my parking place here Friday. It wouldn’t start when I got in it this morning.

“Fortunately I had a gas can, and I walked to gas station next door,” Arnette said. “It only held $2 so that’s what I have in it right now. So I’m gonna need some more.”

David C. Frederick, who drove with friend Don Boner from Pellham, Ala., described an uneventful trip – at least, until they got to Georgia.

“We filled up in Birmingham and got to the other side of Talladega and we topped off again. We’ve got enough to get back to Lawrenceville. Is the gas shortage really that bad around here?” Frederick said.

As for one fuel supplier’s suggestion last week that Gov. Sonny Perdue cancel the UGA-Alabama game because of gas outages – an idea a spokesman for the governor immediately dismissed as “ridiculous” – Frederick was shocked.

“You can’t cancel this. What is he thinking? I mean, you can’t cancel a game like this. I could see if it was a hurricane … but not for something like this. People are going to find a way.”

– Staff writers Chip Towers, Jeff Schultz and Tim Tucker and the Associated Press contributed to this story.