So, I guess it's hurricane season or something. I don't know, I live in Arizona. But apparently, there's a giant hurricane getting ready to beat the entire load of crap out of Florida's east coast right now. And, inevitably, people will have the idea to start charging higher prices for goods that become scarce during such situations. Except there's a lot of anti-price gouging laws on the books to discourage that.
But those laws don't help people in grave situations of widespread emergency, such as hurricanes. Price gouging is a very important part of the process by which people determine how important items, like water and gas and hotel rooms, should be allocated. If the price of gas shoots up, someone is much less likely to buy a lot of it to, say, use their giant gas guzzling SUV in their evacuation plans, and will instead use their more conservative hatchback, leaving a larger supply of gas for things like emergency generators at hospitals.
All goods are finite. And in emergencies, they often become much more finite, to the point of being difficult to find. It's important that people allocate water for drinking rather than watering their lawn right before a storm. Price gouging, aka the price discovery of emergency situations, helps people keep their eye on what's important at the moment.