Business owners grow tired of disruptions, take matters into their own hands

By PHYLLIS ZORN

Staff writer

Two lengthy power outages in less than one week led the owners of Lanning Pharmacy in Marion to make a decision they had contemplated for four years.

An electric generator was installed for the store Wednesday.

“We’ve been considering this for three or four years now,” co-owner Gene Lanning said. “We’ve had the business for five years.”

Lanning said he and Tracy Lanning considered a generator in the event of outages caused by events such as winter storms that take down power lines and also because of city power system failures.

He often believes no straight answers are forthcoming when an outage occurs.

“It seems like the city points toward Evergy and Evergy points toward the city,” Lanning said. “It kind of comes to if you want to do it, you’ve got to do it yourself.”

Power outages bring the pharmacy to a halt, Lanning said.

“It shuts us down,” he said. “We can’t print labels, we can’t get e-mail orders from the doctor without the electricity. If we don’t have power, we can’t go into the computer and do the work that needs to get done before we can fill the prescription.”

We’re looking at getting a generator.

We’ve talked about it before, but it puts us out of business.

The Lannings are not the only business owners thinking a generator might be a good idea.

Mike Regnier, co-owner of NAPA Auto Parts, said the owners are considering having a generator installed, but have not made a final decision.

Barry Allen, owner of Webster Auto, said the cost of an industrial size generator could be prohibitive, but he’s thinking about a generator.

“It would be nice, but I think with what we would need, it would be a matter of cost,” Allen said.

Todd Heitschmidt, president of Central National Bank, said the bank has been considering installing a generator, but suspect the cost could be too prohibitive because of the size of the building and the types of voltage the bank would need.

Chris Hernandez, financial adviser at Edward Jones, got an estimate on a generator and has not made up his mind whether to have one installed.

Real estate agent Lori Heery said she and her husband, insurance agent Doug Heery, joked about getting a generator, but don’t plan to get one as of now.