Waffle House Index

The Waffle House Index is a metric named after the ubiquitous Southern US restaurant chain Waffle House known for its 24-hour, 365-day service. Since this restaurant always remains open, it has given rise to an informal but useful metric to determine the severity of a storm and the likely scale of assistance required for disaster recovery. It was coined by former administrator Craig Fugate of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The metric is unofficially used by FEMA to inform disaster response.

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

"If you get there and the Waffle House is closed? That's really bad..."

Levels
The index consists of three levels, based on the extent of operations and service at the restaurant following a storm:

Background
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. The chain's disaster preparedness measures include assembling and training "Waffle House jump teams" to facilitate fast reopening after disasters. Waffle House, along with other chains (such as Home Depot, Walmart, and Lowe's) 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:

"As Craig [Fugate] often says, the Waffle House test doesn’t just tell us how quickly a business might rebound – it also tells us how the larger community is faring. The sooner restaurants, grocery and corner stores, or banks can re-open, the sooner local economies will start generating revenue again – signaling a stronger recovery for that community. The success of the private sector in preparing for and weathering disasters is essential to a community’s ability to recover in the long run."

A FOIA request response in 2017 included emails saying that the Waffle House Index was a personal project of Craig Fugate's, denying a connection between the Waffle House Index and FEMA's National Business Emergency Operations Center.

In 2022, because of the expected severity of Hurricane Ian, 35 Waffle Houses closed in Florida prior to the storm's arrival, an extremely rare event. Hurricane Ian eventually made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 155 mph, peaking out over the Atlantic Ocean as a Category 5 hurricane.