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The plywood needed to protect windows from storm debris might have been manufactured in China, and a storm in the Gulf of Mexico can force enough interruption on petroleum refining to choke off supply on the other side of the country. The chain also shut down two stores in the St. Petersburg area due to "storm surge and flooding," Boss said. Power went off at the Waffle House just off Interstate 95 in Weldon on Saturday evening as Irene churned through. The restaurant kept serving until it got too dark for the grill cook to see when the food was cooked, then it shut down.
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If the test is to be believed, Hurricane Irma promises to pack a bigger wallop than Hurricane Harvey. Pat Warner, spokesman for Waffle House, said 40 Waffle Houses around Houston were affected by Harvey. The company expects about 250 restaurants to feel the impact from Irma. It's called the Waffle House Index, or test, which uses the operating conditions of the resilient Southern restaurants as a barometer for how well an area will recover from a hurricane, tornado or other hazard.
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The day Jason finally ate at a Waffle House.
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The Waffle House Index is looked at along with more formal measures of storm severity, such as the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Waffle House Index is an informal way of measuring the severity of a hurricane. Idalia is the eighth major hurricane to make landfall along the Gulf Coast since 2017. But when the agency needs an accurate, ground-level gauge for how a community is coping during a crisis, they turn to Waffle House.
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The power had gone out, rendering some of the products in the freezer unusable. The late Anthony Bourdain, of CNN, perhaps had the best description of the diner-like restaurant chain that serves hot meals 24 hours a day, seven days a week. "I know that there are lots of other businesses as well that emergency management will look to," Boss told FOX Weather. If a Waffle House closes before a hurricane, it is a sign that they expect extremely severe weather and that people in the area should also evacuate. The first rule of operating in a disaster, though, is keeping personnel safe.
How sausages, eggs and waffles help American officials understand hurricane damage
FEMA doesn’t publish it anywhere; no one, except for Waffle House itself, counts how many restaurants are running lean or forced to close. But the company does give that count to the agency, and FEMA uses it — along with wind speeds and power outages and other objective measures — to judge a storm’s impact, and to figure out where its own crews and other emergency responders can get fed. Waffle House officials caution that residents should pay close attention to their local leaders and evacuate based on those recommendations.
Every Waffle House employee gets a key fob with lists of relevant phone numbers. Local managers keep track of who has challenging home situations — disabled parents, children with special needs, single heads of household — and might need extra help. Every location has a wall-mounted “crisis response” flier that includes detachable wallet cards listing personal-preparedness steps for hurricanes, tornadoes and ice storms.
The restaurant chain was first founded in 1975 in Long Beach, California, by Harlem native Herb Hudson. It currently operates eight locations, with its newest location in West LA. "We actually have a storm playbook that every restaurant has. We revise it each year as needed. And it tells the management team what to do in the event of an emergency," said Njeri Boss, Vice President of Public Relations for Waffle House. But the Waffle House Index also stands for something less obvious.
(In the next few days, as the storm churned up the coast and flooded North Carolina, it would close 98 all told.) And as soon as the announcement went out, media tracking the storm, and customers on social media, invoked the closings as a sign of the apocalypse. This 2016 story followed a team of Waffle House operations analysts as they decided whether to close any of the chain’s locations in preparation for Hurricane Matthew, a Category 5 storm that ended up affecting the Florida coast as a Category 2 storm. The notion that FEMA bases its disaster assessments entirely on the impact on Waffle House locations appeared to originate with that article. However, the context indicated that Waffle House was one of several large chains observed by FEMA to assess how badly affected an area's operations might be after a national disaster.
If you’re looking to donate, monetary donations to trusted organizations are the recommended route to take. Cash donations allow groups flexibility to get the supplies survivors and communities need when they’re needed. With Irma’s destruction having been hot on the heels of Harvey, and Maria yet to make its way through the Caribbean, it’s important for everyone to be involved. While fundraising may work for some, other teams—whether professional like the Florida Panthers or collegiate, like the Michigan State Spartans football team have taken to volunteering to help in their off-time. The index itself isn’t just about whether or not you can get pralines on your waffles or if you can get waffles at all, but rather about the damage in a neighborhood.
At 10 a.m., the power came back on, the ceramic waffle irons were plugged in and waffles were added to the menu. The company began tracking Irene 10 days ago, moving ice and eggs to staging sites outside the potential damage zone. Waffle House managers say sales volume can double or triple in the aftermath of a storm. The company, whose annual sales are estimated to exceed $600 million, won’t discuss the costs or benefits of reopening quickly after disasters.
Servers nudged customers to order sausage instead of bacon, because four sausage patties fit on the grill for every two slices of bacon. By this time, surrounding counties were requesting state aid from Fugate to help with recovery efforts. He and his team had begun monitoring indicators like school closures, power outages and search-and-rescue operations to determine what areas were in the most immediate need. They provided a color-coded map of the area to give local agencies and the public a better perspective as to where the severity of damage was located and where the state would begin administering help first. As the man who once ran Florida's Division of Emergency Management, Fugate's job took him to southwest Florida in 2004 to survey the destruction left by Hurricane Charley. The Category 4 storm made landfall near Fort Myers, causing catastrophic damage for a storm that was relatively small in size compared to other hurricanes.
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