Waffle House Index


The Waffle House Index is an informal metric named after the Waffle House restaurant chain and is used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to determine the effect of a storm and the likely scale of assistance required for disaster recovery.

Description

The index is based on the reputation of Waffle House for having good disaster preparedness and staying open during extreme weather, or reopening quickly afterwards.

Levels

The index has three levels, based on the extent of operations and service at the restaurant following a storm:
The term was coined by FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate in May 2011, following the 2011 Joplin tornado, during which the two Waffle House restaurants in Joplin remained open.
The measure is based on the reputation of the restaurant chain Waffle House for staying open during extreme weather and for reopening quickly, albeit sometimes with a limited menu, after very severe weather events such as tornadoes or hurricanes; for example, assembling and training "Waffle House jump teams" to facilitate fast reopening after disasters. Waffle House, along with other chains which do a significant proportion of their business in the southern US where there is a frequent risk of hurricanes, have good risk management and disaster preparedness. Because of this, and the fact that a cut-down menu is prepared for times when there is no power or limited supplies, the Waffle House Index rarely reaches the red level.
The "Waffle House Index" sits alongside more formal measures of wind, rainfall, and other weather information, such as the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale, which are used to indicate the intensity of a storm.
Dan Stoneking, FEMA director of external affairs, wrote in a FEMA blog post:
A FOIA request response in 2017 included emails saying that the Waffle House Index was a personal project of Craig Fugate, denying a connection between the Waffle House Index and FEMA's National Business Emergency Operations Center.

Other usage

In response to closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic, on March 24, 2020, Waffle House publicly tweeted, "#WaffleHouseIndexRed: 365 Waffle House restaurants closed. 1,627 open," specifically identifying the closures as an index red and included a map of its location with color coded index levels.
Overall, in 2020, Waffle Houses closed at this rate:
In 2019 the Waffle House Index was mentioned as part of a larger story on CBS News Sunday Morning entitled "Welcome to the Waffle House".