On the day of 23 august, 2005 the tropical storm from the southeastern Bahamas moved towards Florida, and became a hurricane only two hours before it made landfall between Hallandale Beach and Florida. It regained hurricane status about one hour after entering the Gulf of Mexico. The storm surge caused severe and catastrophic damage along the Gulf coast, devastating the cities of Mobile, Alabama, Waveland and Biloxi/Gulfport in Mississippi, and New Orleans and other towns in Louisiana.

The hurricane got Millions of people caught in the deep water covered areas and were required to supply food, medicines and others basic amenities for survival. Even it was required to move out the people from severely affected areas to safer places. Government and other public agencies including American Red Cross, FEMA were struggling hard for many days to provide assistance to hurricane affected areas. But the quickest emergency response came from the Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart provided food, water and other supplies to affected areas on very short notice, as it has mastered logistics and supply chain management. The retail giant was commented for its efforts in helping the recovery but the retail giant did not store medicines which were required to save the lives so the government and health agencies can learn and adopt the supply chain management practices from the giants like Wal-Mart.