At one supermarket, hourlong run on water clears shelves

"We're out back looking for as much water as we have,'' said the purple-shirted Domings, scanning the lengthening lines of carts groaning with 5-gallon jugs, gallon containers, and sacks of plastic water bottles.

The crowds came despite urgings from state officials that boiling water as little as a minute was sufficient for drinking tap water. His stockers later found 10 pallets of water and just plopped them in the aisle; the water was gone within minutes.

For Kalpana Dulipsingh, helping lug a five-gallon jug into her cart, the boil-water order couldn't have come at a worse time. Her congregation, the Church of the Redeemer, is having a lemonade benefit along the popular Minute-Man Bike Trail on Sunday to raise money for the Lexington Food Pantry.

"Maybe we'll put up a sign saying, 'Made with bottled water,''' said Dulipsingh.

Dulipsingh was about to leave when a fellow shopper asked if she wanted to get more water, just to be sure. She took two more gallons before leaving.

For Cynthia Cummings, the call to action came from a daughter, taking a break from her studies at the Cary Memorial Library. Cummings, moving slowly with a cart stuffed with 10 gallon jugs and four plastic Poland Spring packs of 32 bottles each, said her daughter went to get a cup of water at a nearby restaurant and was told not to drink it.

Cummings, in a neighborly spirit, said she was buying for two other families as well.

Shoppers -- and Stop & Shop's Domings -- said they had no idea how long the boil-water alert would last.

"All I know,'' Domings said, was that it was a moderate shopping day, with the sunny skies and high temperatures outside, ''and now, suddenly, we're swamped.''