Panic buying is making a comeback, importance of preparing ahead of time

EUREKA, Calif. (KIEM) — With Humboldt County now in the purple tier and people preparing to stay home more or for the possibility of needing to isolate or quarantine, some local stores have noticed customers doing some panic buying, again.

A photo posted on Facebook by the Humboldt Bay Fire Community Emergency Response Team shows how much toilet paper was in stock at Costco, or not in stock. Some stores have brought back or continue to enforce limits on the number of certain products people can buy.

According to Gene Bass, the team leader for Humboldt Bay Fire CERT, to avoid panic buying people should prepare ahead of time, the same way they do for any other kind of emergency.

“A lot of people think that to prepare you have to go out and buy a bunch of stuff and have this massive storage area where you can hunker down months at a time. It’s really a lot more simple than that. What we recommend is every time you go to the store you set aside even $5 and put that towards your supply kit, and just build up a kit from there,” Bass says.

For more preparedness tips, you can visit humboldtcert.com.