Waffle House’s announcement it is temporarily shuttering all its Tallahassee locations and its restaurant in nearby Crawfordville ahead of Hurricane Helene making landfall Thursday is another indicator of the storm’s magnitude.
“Safety comes first,” a Waffle House representative told the Tallahassee Democrat in an interview Wednesday.
Why do those closures matter? Because the Federal Emergency Management Agency reportedly determines where help is most needed based on the availability of getting some hash browns smothered and covered.
Basically, because many Waffle House locations are in states vulnerable to hurricanes and other tornadoes, and because the chain “prides itself” on being open all of the time, FEMA reckons things must be very bad when the restaurant acquiesces to the weather.
According to Atlanta-based Waffle House’s website, the index has three colors, like a stoplight. “Green means the restaurant is serving a full menu, a signal that damage in an area is limited and the lights are on. Yellow means a limited menu, indicating power from a generator, at best, and low food supplies. Red means the restaurant is closed, a sign of severe damage in the area or unsafe conditions.”
“If you get there and the Waffle House is closed?” FEMA administrator Craig Fugate has said. “That’s really bad. That’s where you go to work.”
“It just doesn’t happen where Waffle House is normally shut down,” Philip Strouse, FEMA’s private sector liaison for the Southeast, told Markeplace in 2015. “They’re the canary in the coal mine, if you will.”
He added the index “gives us a pretty good feel right away of what’s going on at what time.”
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