Las Vegas shoppers hit stores hard Saturday; some shelves bare

Las Vegas Valley shoppers on Saturday continued stocking up on food and some household supplies at supermarkets and big-box retailers, emptying some shelves — especially those for paper and disinfecting products — in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Many shelves remained stocked with food and some household goods.

But store visits by Review-Journal staff and photos on social media show shoppers all over town were having great difficulty finding items such as toilet paper, bottled water, paper towels, canned food, hand sanitizer, cleaning supplies, meats and nonperishables such as rice and pasta. And they waited in long lines to pay for whatever they could find.

At 8:30 a.m., people waited in a line around the building to get into the Costco Wholesale in Summerlin. Around noon, lines wrapped around the building of the Costco store on Marks Street in Henderson, with more lines inside the store to get water and toilet paper.

Some psychologists and mental health researchers characterize this type of mass shopping as an emotional response in the absence of clarity on how much of an impact the coronavirus will have on economies throughout the country.

Las Vegas has been especially hard by convention cancellations, a decline in visitation and layoffs at Strip resorts and related industries.

As of Saturday, health officials have announced 21 cases of coronavirus in Nevada, with 16 cases in Clark County, four in Washoe County and one in Carson City.

Packed parking lots

Parking lots at some Las Vegas stores filled up before dawn and were jam-packed by late morning Saturday. Many stayed that way into the evening.

Pictures forwarded to the Review-Journal showed even the Nellis Air Force Base commissary was affected Saturday, with a lack of canned food and fresh meat on shelves.

Just after 7 p.m. Saturday, Henderson residents Shanta and Deryck Ragoonanan arrived at the Albertsons on West Horizon Ridge Parkway. Their mission: find bottled water.

It was their fifth stop of the day. They visited Target, Sprouts, Walmart and Winco, but came up dry.

“It’s like stop after stop,” said Shanta Ragoonanan, who’s originally from Trinidad. “It just feels like some of this panicked buying is throwing us in a frenzy.”

Deryck Ragoonanan said he survived four hurricanes while living in Florida and didn’t think he’d have to go through something like that again.

“It feels like the zombie apocalypse,” he said.

Asked if any stores reported problems, Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Ken Nogle said that as of about noon Saturday, police “fortunately haven’t had any issues to my knowledge at any of the markets.”

Just before 12:30 p.m. Saturday, cars were backed up onto South Martin Luther King Boulevard in downtown Las Vegas, waiting to turn into the Costco parking lot. But there were some open parking spaces, including five in a row in one area.

At Summerlin’s Costco on Saturday afternoon, the crowd seemed to have thinned out from hours earlier, as there was no line outside the store and a handful of available parking spots. A few shoppers wore masks.

John Ketelsen — who was sitting in front of the store waiting for his wife to pick him up — said the store didn’t seem any busier than usual, but “some things are missing.” He said the store was out of dog food and smaller bottles of water.

“Water is the biggest thing,” he said, noting he has a dispenser at home.

Ketelsen said his wife couldn’t find chicken at a Smith’s store, but he saw plenty at Costco.

At the Target on West Charleston Boulevard, the grocery section was busy. A couple of aisles — which previously housed toilet paper, tissues and disinfecting wipes — were completely empty. Other items in short supply included frozen goods, bleach and cleaning supplies.

Three women — who declined to give their names — were shopping together. They said they’re not stockpiling items and were just trying to find enough to get through the week, but the selection was scarce.

They’d already visited a Walmart store, but couldn’t find what they needed there, either.

What did they still need? “Pretty much everything,” one woman said, including toilet paper, drinks and frozen goods. “People have bought it out.”

They were planning to give up and go home.

Brisk business at gun store

Grocery stores aren’t the only type of business that appears to be experiencing a spike in sales. There was a steady stream of customers Saturday afternoon at the 2nd Amendment Gun Shop on North Rancho Drive in Las Vegas.

The shop has seen an influx of customers over the past couple of weeks, but particularly since about Wednesday, owner/partner Mark Hames said.

The most popular thing customers are looking for: “home protection-type shotguns,” he said.

Customers typically don’t say they’re coming in as a response to COVID-19, Hames said, but sometimes it comes up in conversation.

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter. Contact Julie Wootton-Greener at jgreener@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2921. Follow @julieswootton on Twitter.