IT WAS like the first day of the January sales as hordes of shoppers, up before dawn, braced themselves for battle, poised to elbow, tussle and scrap their way to the checkout.

This is Maryland, not Knightsbridge, and the customers are not fighting over the last size 8 designer dress but for the rolls of silver duct tape, plastic sheeting and storm lanterns that the Government has advised them to buy to protect against a chemical or biological attack.

As the skies brightened, the shoppers, mainly women, appeared by the dozen to queue, the latest line of defence in the War on Terror on the home front. Like their counterparts in the armed forces, these battle-hardened fighters take no prisoners when it comes to claiming the last of anything on the shelf. Long queues formed at the door of Strosniders Hardware in Bethesda before the large family run store opened at 7am.

Stephanie Weisman, 33, from Chevy Chase, was spending hundreds of dollars to construct a “safe room” in accordance with designs outlined by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema). In her overflowing trolley were batteries, torches and duct tape. She had already bought other items on the list, including plastic sheets, bottled water, cans of tuna and beans and packets upon packets of dry crackers.

“I think we just about have everything on the list,” she said. “We want to be prepared, but it has cost — I don’t know how much in all — several hundred dollars definitely.”

Craig Smith, the store manager, said that he had quickly sold out of plastic sheeting, which Fema suggests should be used to seal air vents, windows and doors in the safe room to prevent biological and chemical agents entering.

“I would say we sold out in 40 minutes and we got an extra large shipment in last night because we already sold out yesterday,” he said. “We have sold hundreds and hundreds of rolls since Monday, boxes of duct tape, batteries, flashlights, water. We just keep ordering it and we keep selling it. People are taking four, five and six rolls. I guess they don’t know how much they will need, so they get as much as they can.”

In the next aisle a group of young women stand guard over dwindling supplies of duct tape. “Oh my God, did you hear that? They’re out of plastic sheeting,” comes the cry. “But they have more duct tape, right?” A nearby shelf-stacker with a single box of the precious tape under his arm stopped and shifted nervously as the hunters spied his fresh supplies.

Sarah, 50, a mother of two from Washington, said: “Part of me wonders, should I be buying all of this? If I don’t need it, can I bring it back?” She said that she was not frightened by the Government’s advice to prepare for war but that preparation was a good idea, as long as people did not panic.

Down the road at Safeway, anxious housewives and pensioners were at the door by 6am, eager to fill their trolleys with gallons of water, dry crackers, beef jerky and anything else worth adding to their growing emergency supply kits. In the bottled water aisle only the Perrier shelf remained fully stocked. Glass bottles are no good in time of war, so Fema says. A few plastic bottles of Evian were also left behind.

“Maybe because they are French, you know,” said Ray, a shelf stacker, who wondered if patriotism had filtered through to the shopping list.

Jasmine, 20, a German au pair, filled her trolley with beef jerky, crackers and crisps. “The family I work for sent me to buy their supplies for the war. I think it is a bit crazy,” she said.

At Home Depot, a large hardware chain in Aspen Hill, more shoppers searched with looks of anguish for any items on the Fema list. Since Monday, the store has sold 20 times the amount of plastic sheeting it normally sells in a month and is having trouble ordering enough to meet demand. “I am not sure there is enough plastic sheeting in America for everyone to have enough,” said one checkout worker, adding that keeping the shelves stacked might make for some lucrative overtime. “I guess the retail economy is getting better after all,” he grinned.

Duck the issue

Duct tape, or Duck Tape, has acquired almost mythical properties in America. There is nothing that the polyethylene-coated cotton strips of adhesive material cannot bind, stick or shore up. Except, that is, the heating ducts it was originally designed to fix. Manco Inc, maker of Duck brand tape, says that it was created by Permacell, a division of Johnson & Johnson, during the Second World War. Other experts say that it was invented in the 1920s for the 3M Company, which still makes the biggest-selling brand today. They all agree, however, that the product was perfected by Permacell for the military and was used for everything from taping down rattling gun-turret doors on bombers, to strapping magazines of ammunition on to various parts of a soldier’s anatomy. In Britain it is known as gaffer tape.

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