Ned Bowman:
We lobby, we put education programs on for our members, we do a big trade show expo, and we’re there to advocate on behalf of the industry and support our members in any way we can.

Jeff Lenard:
So, short version of that is you are NACS on a Florida level, and in Florida, there are more than 21 million people. There are 9,400 convenience stores, which is number three of all states. And you have a lot of hurricanes. And unfortunately, the way these hurricanes hit Florida, they go from the bottom to the top, usually on some level, which force people out, which require convenience stores to have to be the last to stay open and the first to reopen. Not to mention they’re in harm’s way. You have a lot of practice in this, what is the process when you find out there’s a tropical storm, something building that could impact Florida?

Ned Bowman:
So the process starts with a phone call from ESF-19, Logan Patten, and he’s inside the Emergency Operation Center and he’ll let me know when they’re gonna activate. This particular storm they activated on September 24. I activated on September 25th at 7:00 AM. I was in the center and then what happens is you start working on different plans for fuel. You look at the forecast track of where this storm is gonna go into and it’s a process of getting ready for where they think this is gonna be and everybody is going along trying to figure out where this thing’s gonna go and what you gotta do. We started calls with our industry on Thursday, September 22. We knew that there was a possibility of a storm coming and we wanted to get people aware and get information out there. So we were able to get our members on the phone and find out what do they need, checking on the fuel supply and just to make them aware this is a possibility.

Jeff Lenard:
This bunker that you’re in is in Tallahassee, and it’s something like what, 40 feet underground? And, and you have it all set up there with other folks who are important to the preparedness. So it is people from the government, meteorology and all these other elements and they have one focus: How do you move people safely out of the way and how do you return them as safely as possible?

Ned Bowman:
I would look at it as like Misson Control in Houston, it’s got big screens, everybody’s in a room, everybody’s communicating with everybody. You’ve got National Guard, you’ve got the electric companies, Florida Highway Patrol, the sheriff’s department, the local authorities, business and industry meteorology as you’d mentioned, DOT. We work very closely with them. You’ve got a media area and a whole National Guard wing. And then you also have energy, which is now ESF-19, the fuel side.
And there are a variety of things that you go over. I remember on one of these phone calls a few years ago, you’re looking at things like are there Jones Act barges that can come into Florida? Can you get police escorts to have trucks go down the wrong way in highways? Could they get police escorts to deliver fuel? All these things to deal with a fairly narrow long state in getting fuel supplied down and getting it back while you have 21 million people possibly in harm’s way going the other direction.
The biggest issue we had with this storm was the track. Meteorology said, ‘This track has no steering currents. We don’t know, usually by now we know there’s a definite path.’ So the path showed it was gonna go into the Tampa area, which would’ve been devastating. Tampa has about 40% to 46% of the fuel that comes into the state coming through that port. So we were developing plans of bringing fuel in for the reentry from other states because the idea was that we were gonna lose Tampa’s port. So that’s the planning that goes on. You’re trying to do all these contingency plans. So you need truckers, you need to know who can take the fuel, you know who needs generators. If you have a transfer switch, the state will offer you to use a generator based upon availability in need.
And so you start developing all these plans. You also had the tax holiday start October 1st. Well, some of the members are trying to manage the inventory for that date. So that was another issue that we ran into. So now you start going through these processes, and then at the last minute, the storm decides it’s gonna go into the Naples, Fort Myers area, and now you’re trying to shift assets and trying to figure out, okay, what changes? So now we’re evacuating Captiva and we’re evacuating Naples. We’re evacuating Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel. So that changes the whole dynamics. Now you’re trying to find out what you have for generators and capacity down there for the reopening and for emergency responders. Everything changes minute by minute on the planning on what you have to do. Each storm is different. Matthew is different than Michael, which was different than Sally, which was different than Irma. And now we have Ian.

Jeff Lenard:
And you’re communicating on three different levels. You’re communicating to get these waivers, whether it’s for reformulate fuel, hours of operation, all things like that. You’re trying to get waivers to make the system work better. You’re also communicating to your members to tell them what they need to know, how they can stay in business or how they can get out of harm’s way if they are in the path. And then you’re also talking to the media. How do you triage those three types of communications that you need to do?

Ned Bowman:
You basically just manage a process. So we would do an industry call nationwide with NACS, EMA and SIGMA at 1 pm every day. We had weather forecasters so we had meteorology, it was led by Logan Patten from ESF-19. And we had API on there. We had the electrical people on there and we had the governor’s staff listening in. And what we ask is we ask the members, ‘What do you need? What are your needs? What are the critical things that you need right now?’ One of the things that came up is we needed a waiver to sell dyed diesel fuel for emergency vehicles. So that would take the strain off of the clear diesel for regular consumers.
RaceTrac wanted the availability of generators for the Fort Myers, Naples area so that they could open up their stores. So you start talking to the state and see what their capacities are of what we need. You need to know what the lines are at the terminals, how long are they are, companies going on allocation that are critical needs to different areas. We also get an RVP waiver for the reformulated gasoline because that was changing over. We were in contact with Love’s and with Pilot, with their members, what were their needs? So the whole industry comes together and it’s pretty interesting how everybody helps everybody out when it’s a critical need like that.

Jeff Lenard:
Tampa has always been seen as the nightmare scenario for storm surge. Among other reasons, it’s very shallow. What is the process that you go through in continuing to communicate to members as it changes from preparation to getting back to operations once the storm passes, if it’s okay to get back to operations? How does that change over?

Ned Bowman:
Once the storm passes, it’s health, safety and welfare of your employees to make sure that they’re okay and to make sure the members are okay. And then you start finding out what the needs are. So the people where the areas got hit, for example, there’s a 7-Eleven in downtown Naples. After the storm passed, he was open with a generator. So now you know you have an asset there. So now is it, do you need fuel? What, what’s the asset that you need? If you need help at all. Then you start looking at the flooding. Now this storm had enough rain where we had several areas of the state, which had a 500 year flood area. One of them was Arcadia. So once the storm passes, you start finding out what are the needs, what do you need, what areas are really hit, and how to drive fuel into it, because everybody’s looking for fuel for generators.
Recovery mode is, okay, so how do you recover from this? How much damage did you have? What assets did you have open? And you go basically start listening to the members. And again, we do those phone calls every day at 1 pm and we take the notes and then we’re being asked by the governor and his staff what’s the situation on the private sector on fuel. So you start working through that. And then after about eight days, I left the EOC and I drove down to Arcadia to find out exactly what was open, what needed. I got information about Circle K stores that were there at a CITGO stations.
We had a Marathon station down there so we were having difficulty getting fuel into that area. The allocations got lifted for the Marathon station. They were able to get flushed. I went to Fort Myers the next day down to the beach. RaceTrac was open, they were about three miles from the beach and they were very busy. The 7-Eleven store that was down another mile, the Southeast manager was there and I was talking to him and he had ankle deep water in the store. They were cleaning it up and they were gonna try to get open. They had a generator running, but in the middle of the parking lot they had a boat.
That boat had to come two miles up the road. You start looking at all the different scenarios that happened during a hurricane. We were able to get 10 generators for RaceTrac, which helped them open, they had fuel. We didn’t have any issues with that. We had other stations, Sunshine Distributing, got their stations up and running. So we had pockets that were key. You had 50% of the stations that were outta fuel, but we had 50% of the stations that were open and selling fuel. So the biggest word that we have during a storm on recovery is patience. If everybody has some patience, you can get through the gasoline issues and a lot of the other issues that you have

Jeff Lenard:
A lot of times on the news, you’ll hear things like somebody’s charging X cents more per gallon. It must be they’re taking advantage of the situation. And of course, there is so much going on behind the scenes to stay open, to get fuel, to have people that are working there that are worried about their own homes and they’re showing up for work. Do you have any stories or any anecdotes that people need to hear more of these things? How behind the scenes, there was incredible acts going on with our industry in terms of how they always respond, even though you don’t necessarily hear those stories?

Ned Bowman:
Yeah, you know, 75% of the convenience stores in the state of Florida are mom and pops. So that means they’re owned by independent operators and they work inside your town. And our motto has always been neighbors serving neighbors. They’re not out there raising the prices. The fuel and gasoline is a commodity. We also have surcharges that get put on by the transporters. The transporter waits in line three hours at the terminal because everybody’s at the terminal trying to get fuel. Well, he’s gonna charge you a surcharge. Well, that’s gotta be added on to the cost of the gasoline. Our members are really not interested in price gouging people.
I mean, if you have a station across the street and they’re closed and their price is at one thing and you’re open and you’re going along and your price is up 10 cents, people think you’re price gouging. Well, no. The other alternative is that people that were across the street made the decision, rightfully so, to evacuate, or their house got damaged and they couldn’t go to work, and they had to stay home and do that. I mean, we had Hurricane Michael came through and Steve’s angry up in Mariana, Florida. He he had to go live with his daughter. Now his daughter had a tree that it fell on the house. Steve had a tree that came through his living room. So it was his daughter’s house, as sad as it sounds, was in better shape than his house. But he made deliveries and he kept the stations open. So that’s some of the things that our members go through. I mean, they’re part of the community andtheir homes get damaged and flooded. Terry Hutchinson, I use as an example, down in Naples, he had the station that was on Fort Myers Beach. It’s gone. But yet he had the tenacity to stay open at the station in Naples to help the community.

Jeff Lenard:
So the TV cameras have left. Maybe there’s less attention paid than there was just even a few days ago. What’s going on now and what do people need to know about what Hurricane Ian did to Florida and did to our industry?

Ned Bowman:
It’s similar to what went on in Mexico Beach. It’s gonna be a decade before you get rebuilt. It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. 85% of the homes that got damaged didn’t have flood insurance. So, now that people are trying to get back to normal, they’re trying to get the mold and get the houses and the debris. You look at the fuel side of it and you look at the debris companies, they bring their own fuel.
The National Guard brings their own fuel. Each entity brings their own fuel. Florida Power and Light brings their own fuel. Duke Energy brings their own fuel. Our members and other areas are bringing fuel to them for the first responders. Yes, the press is gone and the people are still suffering and you’re right, Jeff, there were some videos that are out there, the 18 foot storm surge. It’s sad watching the houses float down the street, but the center of the community or the convenience stores, they will be open and they’ll be serving the community again.

Jeff Lenard:
So are any of these ideas transferable? I I know not every state faces hurricanes, but are there any takeaways for retailers or anyone in terms of how do you plan for disasters and how do you recover from disasters?

Ned Bowman:
I think you have to get as many people on the phone as possible. You have to communicate, you need to know what the ports are doing. You need to know what the assets of the police escorts are. You need to get your members on the phone that are in affected areas, what their needs are. You need the weather people, you need the state on the phone. So the more communication, the more people can get on the same issues and solve problems and help each other out. We had Handy Foods down in the center part of the state, and their transporter just couldn’t keep up with the demand. And one of our members said, ‘Hey, I got spare capacity.’ And he started hauling gasoline for them. So everybody ties together but as long as you communicate and people understand what the issues are, it really works out well.
And that’s probably the biggest takeaway, if you have an issue, you have spare capacity, tell somebody, ask them and you get it done. I mean, we had issues. You have the pipeline from Taft that runs up in Orlando that runs down from Tampa. Well, you have to energize that, and it’s gotta be energized on two ends. So you’ve got Tampa Electric Co-op the port side and up at the terminal is flow to power and light. So that all has to be coordinated to make sure that that gets turned down at the right time and to make sure that the tank is full in Tampa to energize that line. So there’s a lot of takeaways on what you can do and learn. When the colonial pipeline went down, you learn from that process.
You learn from other areas. I learned from Paul Hardin in Texas with Scott Fisher when the storms hit Houston on a flight. We had the flooding here where they closed 75 for 12-14 hours, so all that traffic had to get diverted out. The DOT secretary was there and I just made a statement to them and I said, ‘Can you imagine if we were trying to evacuate electric vehicles and 75 had closed, how do you get those cars turned around and how far can you come all the way around for four hours to get them around?’ And you know, those are some of the thought process that you’re gonna go through in the next couple of years. I really don’t see how right now electric vehicles are gonna be play a part of an evacuation in the state of Florida.

Jeff Lenard:
It’s really tough when you don’t have the same number of nozzles and the length of time to get a sufficient full fill is dramatically higher. And add to that when people are in a panicked mode, they may not be as neighborly as otherwise. To have all of that combined can put some real stress on everybody and the system.

Ned Bowman:
Our CFO, Jimmy Patronis, posted one of the Tesla cars catching on fire because it was flooded.

Jeff Lenard:
And all the batteries that kind of went off.

Ned Bowman:
So there’s real issues. I learned a lot. Each hurricane, like I said, is different. We pray for the people who lost their lives and the people who stayed. People say they have hurricane parties and they want to ride their hurricane out, and then after it goes through they count their blessings, and they say I should never ever stay, I’ll never stay again. It’s, it’s an intense time. It takes real leadership from the state and we’re blessed with with Kevin Guthrie and what he does, the director and his whole team and his whole staff, that’s what they train for and they are the best in the country.

Jeff Lenard:
And likewise, Ned, we are blessed and you are the best at your job. We appreciate what you do for all these events and it’s incredible how much needs to be done in all these situations and how you need to do this with a calm approach. We won’t stop thinking about Florida because even though the cameras have gone away, there’s still a need there to rebuild and as you said, it’s going to take a lot.

Ned Bowman:
Thanks for having me. And thanks for all that NACS and the whole industry does for communities.

Jeff Lenard:
Thank you all for listening. Convenience Matters.

Outro:
Convenience Matters is brought to you by NACS and produced in partnership with Human Factor. For more information, visit convenience.org.

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