4 ms·

How FEMA Uses Waffle House to Measure Disasters

85 points by jcater 12y ago

yaddayadda 12y ago
I grew up in the south-east and have many fond memories of Waffle Houses (aka Awful Houses). I'm out west now and really wish they were out here too. This article has me caving their cheese omelets.
- _abattoir 12y ago
  Or the fabled $5 Everything Hash Browns....
- umanwizard 12y ago
  We have Waffle House in Arizona. It's not exclusively on the Eastern part of the country.
hotgoldminer 12y ago
Nice to see WABE.org (Atlanta's long-time NPR affiliate) here. Another NPR affiliate recently came to the Atlanta airwaves--rather controversially. You may appreciate: http://wabe.org/post/open-letter-regarding-wras http://wabe.org/post/open-letter-regarding-wras Unrelated but interesting.
yaddayadda 12y ago
I'm surprised there isn't more discussion of the article's actual content. Other than makeing me crave cheese omelets, this reminded me of Google's flu trend service - http://www.google.org/flutrends/ http://www.google.org/flutrends/ . It also reminds me of "Ambient Findablity" by Peter Morville - http://www.amazon.com/Ambient-Findability-What-Changes-Become/dp/0596007655 http://www.amazon.com/Ambient-Findability-What-Changes-Becom... .
- hga 12y ago
  OK, I'll bite ^_^ (although I don't think I've ever done so at a Waffle House). FEMA et. al. really need to know the facts on the ground. People lie. Intentionally (in Katrina, a whole lot of people a short distance away from the National Guard and Coast Guard's constant stream of helicopters depositing the rescued at the stadium ... no way you're going to convince me they didn't notice the monster Chinooks), unintentionally because of poor or incomplete information (ever notice how you can't believe anything in early news reports of this sort?), etc. But Waffle House has a system, that is part of what keeps them in business, and that system turns out not to lie. The limited menu is fascinating: limited electricity, i.e. running off generators, no waffles for you! I suspect even Wal-Mart, which has a serious disaster system, also being in disaster prone areas including the southeast, can't match that early on, because they're responding as much to anticipated need as real needs, although maybe they can data mine purchases ... assuming the data link to HQ is still up (don't know if they have a satellite backup). And they can always reallocate a lot of surplus stuff they didn't turn out to need. Or you just don't worry, in the days after this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado there was a great surplus of bottled water in the disaster area, increasing stacks and stacks of it everywhere. Figuring out how much was rushed to the area would give you essentially no useful, or at least new data.
mcmancini 12y ago
If you ever have the opportunity, you should try to go to the Waffle House museum in Atlanta. Incredibly fascinating for at least two reasons: one is that the original looks pretty much the same as a brand new Waffle House, and the other is that there's been a ton of industrial engineering applied to Waffle House courtesy of numerous Georgia Tech alumni.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
omgitstom 12y ago
Waffle house is an interesting company. Don't know how often waffle house will pop up on hacker news but here is a couple fun facts about them. + They have opening ceremonies for all restaurants where they put the key of the front door in wet cement (since they are open 24/7/365) + They hire a lot of illiterate people and people out of jail starting over from scratch, so they have an innovative way to communicate what people order to the cook. The waiter / waitress can 'write' or scribble whatever they need to do, but will set up plates to communicate the order to the cook with condiments [0] [0] https://www.flickr.com/photos/nickgray/378694469/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/nickgray/378694469/
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  They also have two weeks paid vacation for staff. Whenever I road trip (ie all the time), I always eat at Waffle House. Out of hundreds of visits, I've never had a bad experience, and the food is always very good. My wife and I are doing Valentine's Day dinner there because they're so enshrined in our travel adventures.
  - omgitstom 12y ago
    That is funny, I did a valentine's dinner at waffle house when I was in college. We brought a little boom box for romantic music and those little disposable candles for mood lighting :P
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      I had not thought to do that! Will pack the iPod and some candles!
Animats 12y ago
This story is from 2011: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904716604576542460736605364 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240531119047166045765424... McDonalds, back in the Ray Kroc era, was more into disaster recovery than they are now. That was when all McDonalds outlets flew an American flag 24 hours a day.

85 points by jcater 12y ago

I grew up in the south-east and have many fond memories of Waffle Houses (aka Awful Houses). I'm out west now and really wish they were out here too. This article has me caving their cheese omelets.

_abattoir 12y ago
Or the fabled $5 Everything Hash Browns....
umanwizard 12y ago
We have Waffle House in Arizona. It's not exclusively on the Eastern part of the country.

hotgoldminer 12y ago

Nice to see WABE.org (Atlanta's long-time NPR affiliate) here. Another NPR affiliate recently came to the Atlanta airwaves--rather controversially. You may appreciate: http://wabe.org/post/open-letter-regarding-wras http://wabe.org/post/open-letter-regarding-wras Unrelated but interesting.

yaddayadda 12y ago

I'm surprised there isn't more discussion of the article's actual content. Other than makeing me crave cheese omelets, this reminded me of Google's flu trend service - http://www.google.org/flutrends/ http://www.google.org/flutrends/ . It also reminds me of "Ambient Findablity" by Peter Morville - http://www.amazon.com/Ambient-Findability-What-Changes-Become/dp/0596007655 http://www.amazon.com/Ambient-Findability-What-Changes-Becom... .

hga 12y ago
OK, I'll bite ^_^ (although I don't think I've ever done so at a Waffle House). FEMA et. al. really need to know the facts on the ground. People lie. Intentionally (in Katrina, a whole lot of people a short distance away from the National Guard and Coast Guard's constant stream of helicopters depositing the rescued at the stadium ... no way you're going to convince me they didn't notice the monster Chinooks), unintentionally because of poor or incomplete information (ever notice how you can't believe anything in early news reports of this sort?), etc. But Waffle House has a system, that is part of what keeps them in business, and that system turns out not to lie. The limited menu is fascinating: limited electricity, i.e. running off generators, no waffles for you! I suspect even Wal-Mart, which has a serious disaster system, also being in disaster prone areas including the southeast, can't match that early on, because they're responding as much to anticipated need as real needs, although maybe they can data mine purchases ... assuming the data link to HQ is still up (don't know if they have a satellite backup). And they can always reallocate a lot of surplus stuff they didn't turn out to need. Or you just don't worry, in the days after this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado there was a great surplus of bottled water in the disaster area, increasing stacks and stacks of it everywhere. Figuring out how much was rushed to the area would give you essentially no useful, or at least new data.

mcmancini 12y ago

If you ever have the opportunity, you should try to go to the Waffle House museum in Atlanta. Incredibly fascinating for at least two reasons: one is that the original looks pretty much the same as a brand new Waffle House, and the other is that there's been a ton of industrial engineering applied to Waffle House courtesy of numerous Georgia Tech alumni.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

omgitstom 12y ago

Waffle house is an interesting company. Don't know how often waffle house will pop up on hacker news but here is a couple fun facts about them. + They have opening ceremonies for all restaurants where they put the key of the front door in wet cement (since they are open 24/7/365) + They hire a lot of illiterate people and people out of jail starting over from scratch, so they have an innovative way to communicate what people order to the cook. The waiter / waitress can 'write' or scribble whatever they need to do, but will set up plates to communicate the order to the cook with condiments [0] [0] https://www.flickr.com/photos/nickgray/378694469/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/nickgray/378694469/

toomuchtodo 12y ago
They also have two weeks paid vacation for staff. Whenever I road trip (ie all the time), I always eat at Waffle House. Out of hundreds of visits, I've never had a bad experience, and the food is always very good. My wife and I are doing Valentine's Day dinner there because they're so enshrined in our travel adventures.
- omgitstom 12y ago
  That is funny, I did a valentine's dinner at waffle house when I was in college. We brought a little boom box for romantic music and those little disposable candles for mood lighting :P
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    I had not thought to do that! Will pack the iPod and some candles!

Animats 12y ago

This story is from 2011: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904716604576542460736605364 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240531119047166045765424... McDonalds, back in the Ray Kroc era, was more into disaster recovery than they are now. That was when all McDonalds outlets flew an American flag 24 hours a day.