Are Wal-Mart stores unprepared for storms?


Wal-Mart parking lot If you've been paying attention to the stock market and Fed rate cuts this week, you may have noticed that a deadly ice storm has crossed the plains from Kansas to Oklahoma to Missouri. Over a million people have been left without power due to ice felling power lines, and schools across all three states have been closed almost this entire week. In Oklahoma alone, all 77 counties in that state have been declared in a "state of emergency." Not good.

What to do when half of the town is without power and it's right at the freezing mark? Find relatives or friends to visit (and stay the night with), find a nearby hotel and check in (if it has power), or spend all day in retail stores to occupy the kids and keep them from climbing the walls in your powerless home. So, let's bring in the world's largest retailer -- Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT). I visit one of the retailer's locations every week to perform research. Could not do this part of Monday and Tuesday of this week, though -- a loss of power caused a local Wal-Mart Supercenter to be completely shut down. See the picture to the right? Ever see a Wal-Mart parking lot that empty?


This brings me to a much larger point: it's hard to believe a large retailer does not have a power redundancy plan in place. In the Midwest, the weather can include destructive tornadoes and ice storms that can cause severe power outages at a moment's notice. Yet, retailers that are open 24/7 and, oddly, can be a lifeline for thousands of residents in need don't have emergency generators that can power themselves internally for 24 hours or so?

When I approached this particular Wal-Mart entrance yesterday, an employee guarding the entrance said that all the food in refrigerated cases would need to be thrown out (that's quite a loss) and that the store "should be opened by late Tuesday. She was correct, but it still leaves me wondering, Wal-Mart: is there a reason (cost, perhaps) that locations in high-risk-weather states don't have some kind of backup power source? Inquiring minds want to know.

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