New York, NY, September 26, 2005 -- Retailers including Wal-Mart Stores said Sunday that most of their stores forced to close because of Hurricane Rita have reopened and are restocking their shelves as they wait for residents to return home.
"While there was a disruption, it won't be cataclysmic," for merchants, said Scott Krugman, a spokesman at Washington-based The National Retail Federation. "This should have a minimum impact on nationwide sales."
Wal-Mart, which closed 155 facilities Saturday morning, reopened all but 52 by Sunday, according to Linda Blakely, a company spokeswoman.
Blakely said the store that sustained the most damage was a Sam's Club in Lake Charles, Louisiana, an area that was one of the hardest hit by Rita, which made landfall early Saturday morning.
But she added: "The damage reports are still coming in."
Meanwhile, Wal-Mart's discount rival Target Corp., which had shuttered 32 stores on Saturday morning, now has only four stores that remain closed. Three are in Texas in Beaumont, Galveston and Port Arthur. The other is in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
"We were able to open within 24 hours," said Carolyn Brookter, a company spokeswoman.
Walgreen Co. said Sunday that more than 160 out of the 208 Houston area stores that were forced to close on Friday reopened as of Sunday. A spokesman for the drugstore chain, Michael Polzin, said local managers were putting a priority on providing pharmacy service to patients in need of prescriptions. The retailer added that it expects its Houston stores to begin receiving additional product shipments on Monday.
Home Depot, the nation's largest home improvement retailer, said only two of the 46 stores that were shuttered Saturday morning remained closed. The shuttered stores are in Orange, Texas, and in Lake Charles, said Don Harrison, a company spokesman.
Harrison said Home Depot has dispatched over 100 trucks to bring additional supplies to stores throughout the night. The retailer also said employees from Brownsville, and Austin, Texas, were traveling to Houston to help out at stores in that area.
"There are not a lot of customers in the stores," Harrison said, but he added, "We want to be in stock as soon as possible when the population gets back into town."
