Months before Hurricane Irene was even on the radar -- meteorologists' or otherwise -- Home Depot had packed trailers with plywood, flashlights, tarps and water, ready to send supplies to any store where such a storm might hit.
As of Friday, more than 400 stores were in the path of Irene, and Home Depot was keeping some locations open 24 hours so customers up and down the East Coast could stock up on batteries or gas cans.
"This is a year-round process for us," said Russ Householder, captain of Home Depot's emergency response team.
Atlanta is not in Irene's path, but that doesn't make a difference for many local companies.
UPS, based in Sandy Springs, stopped pickups and deliveries in low-lying areas of North Carolina, New Jersey and other states. Spokeswoman Susan Rosenberg said a team of five staff meteorologists had been monitoring the storm all week from Louisville, Ky., and as a result, 13 airplanes that would have stayed on the East Coast during the storm will be relocated there.
International flights that would normally land in Philadelphia were also detoured to Kentucky.
Production has stayed consistent at Georgia-Pacific's two Georgia plywood plants, in Madison and Warm Springs, where the popular hurricane window covering is pumped out 24 hours a day.
But in addition to shipping its 700 different types of plywood to stores' distribution centers, as it normally does, the Atlanta company delivered four or five varieties directly to 180 East Coast stores, said Jon Moss, Georgia-Pacific's production planning and optimization manager.
Each trailer contains about 1,000 plywood panels, some of which came from the company's existing inventory. A plant produces about 20 truckloads of plywood a day.
Moss said demand has shifted because of the hurricane, but the stores of inventory mean no extra material was produced.
"When storms like this come up, we're watching them from before they get a name," he said. "We got into a cycle of collaboratively planning these events on a 12-month basis."
For the first time, Home Depot is juggling before-the-storm preparation in Northern cities with after-storm cleanup in Puerto Rico and other areas.
No one from the company would comment on the boon that natural disasters such as this one mean for business, but in a second-quarter earnings call last week, executives noted that repair business from the season's harsh storms was one of the main reasons that Home Depot did well during that period.
A spokesman for the company said Home Depot plays a critical role in disaster response for communities, as people come in for generators before a storm or chain saws and cleaning supplies afterward.
For Irene, Home Depot has been using mobile checkout to get customers through the stores more quickly and has been updating its website to show when stores close as the storm approaches.
And the trailers packed in advance are designed so employees can put displays directly on the sales floor and not spend time unpacking a box of flashlights and putting them on shelves.
"From a timing standpoint, it's important," Householder said. "We want it in front of customers, especially in a time like this."
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