Walmart is renown for the efficiency of their logistics and shipping. Sometimes that is what is needed to get supplies to the people who need them during emergencies. Small stores can’t re-route hundreds of trucks quickly, load them with what people need, then get the supplies to them. Walmart can. Emphasis added.
Wal-Mart was on the scene following Hurricane Katrina long before the bureaucracies. Phillip Capitano, mayor of the New Orleans suburb of Kenner [said] the “only lifeline in Kenner was the Wal-Mart stores. We didn’t have looting on a mass scale because Wal-Mart showed up with food and water so our people could survive.” It will be interesting to see whether the lack of big box stores in Manhattan has any effect on the speed of the recovery there. Mom-and-pop stores simply can’t do what big stores can in these circumstances.
In another example of how big companies can help, Anheuser-Busch filled one million cans with water and sent them to Sandy victims no charge.