By now, Oktoberfest should be in full swing in Helen, the German-themed resort town about 90 miles from Atlanta in the North Georgia mountains.

“Most of the shops wait for this season because it’s our time to make money,” said Katie Sears, an employee at the Hansel & Gretel Candy Kitchen, known for its fudge and Chattahoochee Snappers.

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Bob Andres / bandres@ajc.com

This QT station on Cobb Parkway in Marietta was one of the few stations in East Cobb that seemed to have gas. The line stretched back onto Cobb Parkway, and they had an attendant directing cars to the pumps.

GAS SHORTAGE

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This year, though, “business is slow, compared to what this season should be right now. It’s nothing compared to last year.” Sears blamed the gas crunch.

On a beautiful fall weekend full of events – from the University of Georgia-Alabama game in Athens to the Atlanta Football Classic and PGA Tour Championship in the city, the North Georgia State Fair in Marietta and the Auburn University home game against Tennessee – people sat in their vehicles, fuming in long lines outside the filling stations with gas.

Saturday afternoon, the QT on Chapel Hill Road at I-20 in Douglasville had fuel, and a line of motorists a quarter-mile long snaked out of the station and down the street.

Another QT, at Lawrenceville Highway and North Druid Hills Road in Tucker, was out of gas. But about two dozen customers were parked there anyway, waiting for a tanker truck they hoped would show soon.

A harried worker at a Texaco station in Woodstock said before abruptly hanging up the phone, “It’s crazy right now! It’s slammed! Our parking lot’s full and they’re out in the intersection.”

Weeks after Hurricane Ike shut down Gulf Coast refineries and dried up interstate pipelines, the shortage continued, hitting hardest in Atlanta, Nashville, and the Carolinas, including the Charlotte area and the mountain towns to the west. Many across the Southeast were keeping their cars in the garage this weekend, forced to cancel plans for fear they’ll run out of gas.

“I don’t have any assurance that I’m gonna even be able to get more than $30 worth of gas,” said Wendy Stewart, 37, a bank manager from Atlanta who had planned to drive to Charlotte. “How am I gonna get out of town and drive five hours on $30 of gas? I can’t do it.”

Tom Crosby, a spokesman for AAA Carolinas, said more than two-thirds of the Gulf Coast oil refineries shut down by Ike are back online.

Fuel is again flowing in the pipelines that serve the hardest-hit areas, he said, but not enough to account for folks rushing to top off their tanks when an empty station is resupplied. “It’s like ants to a picnic and they feed until it’s all gone,” Crosby said.

The gas shortage didn’t seem to cause much of a problem Saturday for several metro Atlanta event organizers.

The Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History in Kennesaw, for example, drew 581 people to the grand opening of its education center. “We had a good turnout,” said museum spokeswoman Jeanetta Jones.

Similarly, Catherine Woodling, spokeswoman for Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, said, “We were pretty pleased with the turnout” for the first Greater Atlanta Play Day and Backyard Campout in Central Park.

Woodling, however, was less than pleased with her gas-search late Saturday afternoon. She spent more than two hours looking for gas before giving up and hoped the quarter-tank she had in her car would last through the weekend.

— Staff writers Brian Feagans and Doug Roberson and the Associated Press contributed to this report.