The Waffle Home Index: Measuring Storm Depth with Waffles?

On the web, it is sensible to take all the pieces you learn with a wholesome dose of skepticism. There are many half-truths and outright lies on-line, so once you hear one thing outlandish, there is a good probability it is a falsehood unfold by way of social media posts and unscrupulous blogs. Nevertheless, there are a handful of instances the place these outlandish claims are official, the Waffle Home Index is one such instance.

Above: Waffle Home as a catastrophe measurement device? Sounds loopy, nevertheless it truly works.

Waffles Predicting Climate Severity?

It might be exhausting to imagine, however the Waffle Home Index is an actual metric utilized by the Federal Emergency Administration Company (FEMA) to measure the dimensions and severity of a storm. It is primarily based on the informal restaurant chain with greater than 2,000 areas all through the southern United States. Each Waffle Home location is open 24 hours a day, three hundred and sixty five days a 12 months, and the chain has turn out to be well-known for staying open throughout extreme climate.

Above: The Iconic Waffle Home Signal. Photograph by: Flickr / Steve Snodgrass

It isn’t remarkable for a restaurant to remain open rain or shine, however chances are you’ll be considering {that a} city-wide energy outage would absolutely trigger Waffle Home to shut its doorways. Not so — the corporate truly has a powerful catastrophe response plan in place. Well-liked Science experiences, “Waffle Home is a pacesetter in catastrophe preparedness. It maintains its personal fleet of moveable turbines, operates a cellular command middle to help in catastrophe restoration, and trains staff in disaster administration to make sure that it might resume operations as rapidly as potential, usually inside hours. And since 2012, it experiences all this info on to FEMA by way of electronic mail.”

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There is a particular restricted menu for when turbines are in use or meals provides are working low, however Waffle Home will not shut except it is completely crucial. Places in Joplin, Missouri stayed open at the same time as a multiple-vortex EF5 twister struck the town.

Above: This Waffle Home on the Biloxi, Mississippi coast was torn to shreds by Hurricane Katrina. Photograph: Carol M. Highsmith / Library of Congress

The Waffle Home Index

When Waffle Home closes resulting from a storm, there’s severe trigger for concern. FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate coined the time period, and informed the Wall Avenue Journal, “For those who get there and the Waffle Home is closed? That is actually dangerous. That is once you go to work.” This led to the event of the Waffle Home Index as an off-the-cuff metric for measuring the results of storms, hurricanes, and even tornadoes. The index has three ranges:

• Inexperienced – The scenario is comparatively regular, and the restaurant remains to be serving its full menu. Energy outages and structural harm are unlikely.
• Yellow – The restaurant is serving a restricted menu, and could also be working with a generator and/or restricted meals reserves.
• Crimson – The restaurant is closed. This sometimes occurs provided that structural harm is extreme or meals reserves have run out.

Whereas the Waffle Home Index is not a proper measurement of disasters, it is nonetheless an actual metric tracked by FEMA — imagine it or not. So, in the event you’re ever in a Waffle Home and staff begin closing up store throughout a storm, you’d higher get out of Dodge ASAP.

Sources

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Written by Patrick McCarthy