“ 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.”
FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate on the agency’s “Waffle House Index.”
It seems silly, but I find this to be really clever. Waffle Houses pride themselves on being able to stay open during natural disasters; they’ve even written an in-house “hurricane playbook.” Couple this sort of consistent response with the fact that Waffle House locations blanket hurricane areas and you’ve just bootstrapped a free, distributed qualitative indicator for conditions on the ground. (Via Gizmodo)
Source: Gizmodo
