065106 02: A man stands in a partially destroyed house September 27, 1989 in South Carolina. Hugo is ranked as the eleventh most intense hurricane to strike the US this century and is rated the second costliest with over seven billion dollars in damages. (Photo by Alan Weiner/Liaison) FROM EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY ASTRONAUT ALEXANDER GERST: Watch out, America! #HurricaneFlorence is so enormous, we could only capture her with a super wide-angle lens from the @Space_Station, 400 km directly above the eye. Get prepared on the East Coast, this is a no-kidding nightmare coming for you. #Horizons CLEARED: All platforms/affils COURTESY: Alexander Gerst/ESA PHOTOS: https://twitter.com/Astro_Alex/status/1039870760343543814 NS Slug: NC:FLORENCE-RIVER FLOODING REACHES WINDOWS (STRONG) Synopsis: Video of flooding from the Pungo River in Belhaven, NC, which has risen dramatically due to Hurricane Florence Video Shows: Video of flooding from the Pungo River in Belhaven, NC, which has risen dramatically due to Hurricane Florence Keywords: HURRICANE FLORENCE SOUTHEAST UNITED STATES SEVERE WEATHER STORM John Berman: My mic cord just split in two Susan Bostic and her grandson Tyler evacuate her home in Rocky Point, NC. President Donald Trump visits the Temple Baptist Church, where food and other supplies are being distributed during Hurricane Florence recovery efforts, Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2018, in New Bern, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) Michael Nelson floats in a boat made from a metal tub and fishing floats after the Neuse River went over its banks and flooded his street during Hurricane Florence September 13, 2018 in New Bern, North Carolina. Some parts of New Bern could be flooded with a possible 9-foot storm surge as the Category 2 hurricane approaches the United States. (CNN) — As the monstrosity that’s Hurricane Florence moves closer to the Carolinas, the Waffle House is joining the list of agencies and businesses tracking the storm’s every twist and turn. The Southern breakfast chain, which is open 24 hours a day all year, activated a storm center to monitor the Category 2 hurricane. Waffle House restaurants are known for staying open during natural disasters, and federal officials use them to determine the severity of a hurricane, tornado or other hazards on a local area. The Federal Emergency Management Agency coined the term “Waffle House Index” to measure the effect of a natural disaster on an area. If a Waffle House shuts down or limits its menu after such hazards, federal officials conclude the community took a major hit. “The Waffle House test just doesn’t tell us how quickly a business might rebound — it also tells how the larger community is faring,” FEMA said in a 2011 blog post when Craig Fugate was administrator. “The sooner restaurants, grocery and corner stores, or banks can re-open, the sooner local economies will start generating revenue again — signaling a strong recovery for that community.” The ⁦@WaffleHouse⁩ Storm Center is activated and monitoring #Florence. Plan ahead and be safe. pic.twitter.com/UOBi5oZRRi — Waffle House News (@WaffleHouseNews) September 11, 2018 In a 2016 interview with NPR, Fugate described how FEMA applied the Waffle House test. “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 spokesman Pat Warner said Fugate came up with the test during the 2004 hurricane season in Florida. “If we are open quickly after the storm, that means the community is coming back and folks are out, we are getting back to that sense of normalcy,” Warner told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin on Wednesday. “After a storm, they’re really looking to us to be there to help them out because they’re used to us being there the rest of the year.” Waffle House is headquartered in Georgia, and has more than 2,000 restaurants, most of them in the South.<doc-sep>Hurricane Florence: How the Waffle House Index helps FEMA during storms originally appeared on abcnews.go.com Among the tools the Federal Emergency Management Agency informally uses on the ground to monitor hurricanes is the status of Waffle Houses. The Georgia-based restaurant chain prides itself on having its 1,500 locations open 24/7, 365 days a year. That can because most of its outposts are in the South and the Gulf Coast and, thus, vulnerable to hurricanes, tropical storms and flooding. For precisely these reasons, it’s also a reliable gauge of a storm's path of destruction. In other words, if it's closed, you probably don't want to be in the area. (MORE: Hurricane Florence's tropical storm-force winds begin lashing North Carolina, life-threatening storm surge and rain predicted) The "index" is the brainchild of former FEMA administrator Craig Fugate. He was unavailable for comment Thursday. “If a Waffle House is closed because there's a disaster, it's bad,” Fugate told NPR in 2016. “We call it red. If they're open but have a limited menu, that's yellow. If the Waffle House is open, everything's good.” PHOTO: A Waffle House (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) (MORE: Hurricane Florence's latest path: What to expect and when) Waffle House CEO Walter Ehmer, who was in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, spoke Thursday about the index on CNBC. “It sounded silly to us, too,” he said, “but we're actually flattered they think about us in that regard." As for Thursday's Waffle House status: "We've got teams up and down the coast and in the evacuation markets," Ehmer said. "Most of our stores are still open. We're fortunate that none of our stores that are affected, which for us is over a couple hundred, none of them are right on the beach. Most of them are out of harm's way ... but only about a few of them are closed." The chain tweeted Tuesday that its storm center was activated for Florence. It was unclear exactly which locations in Florence's path were open. Story continues Waffle House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. PHOTO: A closed Waffle House restaurant is seen on Sept. 13, 2018 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. (Alex Edelman/AFP/Getty Images) The company does work closely with FEMA as part of the agency's partnerships with private companies. Ehmer wrote about his company's hurricane efforts in 2012. "We put our leadership on the ground right after the storm to make the decisions needed on where to send the supplies and manpower," he wrote in a post on the FEMA website. "Within hours of Hurricane Irene making landfall, our Chairman & CEO, two Executive Vice Presidents, a subsidiary President, our CFO and I were all on site managing the emergency from the front lines." He continued, "We had staged some supplies and sent additional manpower into the area. However it was the management on the ground making the decisions about what needed to go where – not someone back in our corporate office in Georgia. This allowed us to quickly respond to the issues at our restaurants." (MORE: Hurricane Florence expected to cause dangerous inland flooding: How to prepare) It's not surprising the diners are used as a model for forecasters, says Panos Kouvelis, director of the Boeing Center for Supply Chain Innovation at Washington University in St. Louis. He has studied Waffle House, Walmart, Home Depot and Loews and uses these companies as case studies of strong supply chain and risk management strategies, which make them particularly nimble when it comes to shifting operations in storms and disasters and then stay running, when customers need their products the most. "Right now Waffle House is probably studying which restaurants are going to be affected," Kouvelis told ABC News. "They try to pre-position supplies in storage somewhere relatively safe. Priority one is, 'Who are our people? How will this storm affect their lives?' Then you prepare how to move them. You may reserve hotel rooms so they can sleep near stores that are going to be open. “Why are they good at it? Because they’ve seen it many times in the past and they’ve learned from it and they have a really good playbook." The ?@WaffleHouse? Storm Center is activated and monitoring #Florence. Plan ahead and be safe. pic.twitter.com/UOBi5oZRRi — Waffle House News (@WaffleHouseNews) September 11, 2018 (MORE: Thousands of water bottles, meant for Puerto Rico's Hurricane Maria survivors, left to rot on airport tarmac) FEMA cautioned reporters against taking the index too seriously. "Look, I think it was used at a point in time," FEMA's Alex Amparo told reporters on a phone briefing. "There is no official use for it. Our focus is on more empirical data." But a FEMA blog post from last September says: "If a Waffle House can serve a full menu, they’ve likely got power (or are running on a generator). A limited menu means an area may not have running water or electricity, but there’s gas for the stove to make bacon, eggs, and coffee: exactly what hungry, weary people need."<doc-sep>This story was published in 2018. During hurricane season, news coverage is full of terms that often create confusion, like “landfall.” Here is a glossary. Landfall The term does not refer to when the storm meets land; rather, it refers to when the calm center of the storm (or its “eye,” see below) crosses the shoreline. It is an important marker of the storm’s progression. The storm can make a “direct hit” on a particular location, an “indirect hit” or a “strike,” depending on its spatial relationship to the storm’s track and the strength of winds and tides. Here is an expanded list of definitions from the National Hurricane Center. Eye and Eyewall The eye is the roughly circular area of relatively light winds in the middle of a storm. It can range from a 20- to 40-mile diameter of clear skies.<doc-sep>The Waffle House Index — which is, again, a real thing that our government uses — is color-coded. If Waffle Houses are open and offering a full menu, the index is green. If they’re offering a limited menu, it’s yellow. If locations in the affected area are forced to close, the index is red — and because Waffle Houses are very prepared, this is the rarest scenario. In Murrells Inlet, S.C., a still-operating Waffle House employee told a reporter that during 2016’s Hurricane Matthew, the location only closed after the ceiling tiles began to fall.<doc-sep>
The Waffle House Storm Center is actively monitoring Hurricane Florence, an indicator that parts of the East Coast are in serious danger. That's because the 24-hour restaurant chain is known for more than a fast breakfast — it often remains open during natural disasters, providing food and resources to first responders. The Federal Emergency Management Agency even monitors a "Waffle House Index," a color-coded indicator of what restaurants are open, closed or offering a limited menu, to gauge how well an area will recover from a hurricane, tornado or other hazard. "The Waffle House test just doesn't tell us how quickly a business might rebound – it also tells how the larger community is faring," a FEMA blog post from 2011 states. "The sooner restaurants, grocery and corner stores or banks can reopen, the sooner local economies will start generating revenue again – signaling a strong recovery for that community." Tuesday, Waffle House announced its Storm Center was active and monitoring Florence. The team also asked people to "plan ahead and be safe." Florence has diminished to a Category 2 hurricane but is still considered "life-threatening," according to the National Weather Service. More than a million people have been evacuated from the projected path of the storm, set to make landfall along the Carolinas early Friday. More:Life hacks to stay safe ahead of Hurricane Florence More:Hurricane Florence dos and don'ts: Ways to keep yourself and your property safe More:Hurricane Florence: Flight cancellations now at 1,400; more likely Sean Rossman contributed to this story. Follow Ashley May on Twitter: @AshleyMayTweets