Waffle House, whose penchant for remaining open even in cases of natural disasters is so consistent that FEMA uses its rare closures to determine the severity of such disasters, has announced that they will be temporarily closing 429 of their locations due to coronavirus, including several in the Ohio area.
As odd as it sounds, the so-called “Waffle House Index” is a tool used by FEMA to measure just how badly a natural disaster such as a hurricane or tornado has affected the community where the restaurant is located.
Former FEMA administrator Craig Fugate explained the line of thinking behind the index in a 2016 NPR interview:
“They are open most of the time. And that was the index. If a Waffle House is closed because there’s a disaster, it’s bad. We call it red. If they’re open but have a limited menu, that’s yellow,” he said. “If they’re green, we’re good, keep going. You haven’t found the bad stuff yet.”
Waffle House’s Thursday morning tweet announcing the closures started with a concerning hashtag, then: #WaffleHouseIndexRed.
This article appears in Best Of Cincinnati 2020 (12098053).
