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The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has inspired a number of rumors, myths, and urban legends. While the majority of these rumors are conspiracy-based ones involving FEMA camps, FEMA coffins, or general martial law conspiracies, another oft-referenced claim holds that FEMA uses something called the Waffle House index to assess the scope, scale, and impact of regional national disasters. See this email we received in 2015: Given its large presence in modern-day tinfoil hat lore, it's sometimes hard to remember that FEMA's primary purpose isn't enforcing the new world order upon us any day now. Wikipedia concisely summarizes FEMA's primary purpose as being to coordinate the response to a disaster that has occurred in the United States and that overwhelms the resources of local and state authorities. FEMA operated as an independent agency from its effective creation in 1979 until 2003, when the Homeland Security Act of 2002 brought it into the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). (It's possible that FEMA's 2003 move from its originally independent status to being part of a law enforcement agency partly inspired fears that FEMA was sinister or authoritarian in nature.) Compounding FEMA's public relations challenge is the fact that FEMA only tends to be involved in times of great distress. For Americans to require FEMA's help, whatever happened on the ground must have been quite severe. On top of that, the then newly-reorganized agency's widely-criticized, delayed response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 left many with the impression FEMA was a bumbling (and at worst, carelessly lethal) example of federal inefficiency. As the specter of Katrina faded, an interesting claim about FEMA began circulating around 2011. It held that one of FEMA's core disaster assessment metrics involved the Waffle House chain, and the level of impact on the operations of Waffle Houses near any given disaster factored into the agency's classification of the severity of such events. On 7 July 2011 an article titled News of the Day — What Do Waffle Houses Have to Do with Risk Management? was published to FEMA's blog and explained that: FEMA's blog in turn referenced a 6 July 2011 article in occupational safety publication EHS Today: That article went on to explain specifically how Waffle House factored into FEMA's disaster assessment practices: The notion that FEMA bases its disaster assessments entirely on the impact on Waffle House locations appeared to originate with that article. However, the context indicated that Waffle House was one of several large chains observed by FEMA to assess how badly affected an area's operations might be after a national disaster. A 19 July 2011 Insurance Journal article credited Kouvelis with the insight about large chains in general, quoting him as indicating that companies that are most frequently exposed to supply-chain disruption are the ones that have the best risk management plans. That article focused on the general concept of looking to the biggest business entities to determine impact on operations, not necessarily just Waffle House: On 1 September 2011, Fugate was quoted in a Wall Street Journal (in an article on the clues yielded by the chain alongside more formal metrics such as the Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale: Perhaps more interesting than FEMA's reliance on Waffle House was the chain's own disclosures about disaster management that were related in the WSJ article. While the company admitted sales volume can double or triple in the aftermath of a disaster, Waffle House maintained their strategy is more about marketing and building goodwill than profits: Since FEMA, Fugate, and Kouvelis' mention of FEMA's Waffle House Index in 2011, the fun fact has slowly become a staple of listicles and other strange but true articles. However, the applicable metric is neither formal nor universal: Hurricane Sandy (for instance) primarily affected New York and New Jersey, where Waffle House isn't an omnipresent brand. The professor who popularized the idea named Waffle House among four large chains in total known for disaster preparedness, perhaps none as catchy as Waffle House. It's true that FEMA factors the impact on large businesses into its assessment of natural disasters, but it's similarly accurate to note Waffle House itself holds no particular magical ability to divine the scope of a hurricane, earthquake, or flash flood.
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