The recent gas shortage in Nashville is a study in human psychology. To have a major U.S. city run out of gas when most others are doing fine is a curiosity, to say the least. What happened?
Suppliers tell us there was no shortage of gasoline coming into the city until someone pushed the panic button. Who, no one really knows. The Colonial Pipeline was running at 25-percent capacity, according to the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency. That’s not down to a trickle, but it can be problematic if people start to freak out, which they did. It doesn’t help that Nashville is at the end of one of the tributaries that branches off the main line of the Colonial Pipeline. When word spread that some stations were out of gas, a product of the refinery slowdown because of Hurricane Ike, people started heading to their nearest gas station as if there would never be anymore gas. They were filling up their tanks, gas cans, anything that would hold liquid.
I was on the radio the Friday afternoon of the gas run and heard stories of fights breaking out and lines sometimes a mile long. I begged my listeners to treat this like a snow situation. If you have enough gas in your car, I urged them, then just go home, spend some time with your family this weekend, watch some ballgames and relax. If there’s still no gas on Monday then you might just have to take the day off. It’s not going to be the end of the world.
Few took my advice.
The drive home was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. I passed five gas stations?all were completely out of gas. Most had police tape around the pumps; most had taken down the prices from the signs. I remember the oil embargo of the ’70s and I don’t remember it being this bad.
My wife had run low on gas that afternoon and called me to tell me that “Bennie the BioBenz” had saved her. Bennie is a 1985 Mercedes Benz that I had restored for a radio project on biodiesel. Many were skeptical when I first started telling my radio listeners that I was making my own fuel. Some made jokes. Others laughed. As I tooled around the entire weekend with plenty of fuel on hand no one was laughing.
My kids said it reminded them of the “War of the Worlds” remake with Tom Cruise when he’s riding around in the only automobile that still works. I fully expected by the end of the weekend people would be trying to steal my car.
On Friday night, I pulled into a gas station to get a soft drink. There were several people standing in front of the cashier. They were from out of town. They had just stopped in to get gas and couldn’t understand why there was none. They asked her what they were supposed to do. She looked off in the distance and pointed. We all turned to look. A lone gas station on the street had a gas tanker parked near the pumps. Cars were lined up around the block. It was eerie.
It was a not-so-subtle reminder that, at any given time based on the circumstances, we’re just moments away from total anarchy.
