FEMA uses Waffle House to determine the severity of the storm

The Southern Breakfast Channel, open 24 hours a year, on Wednesday activated a storm center to monitor Category 2 hurricane. Waffle House restaurants are known to stay open during natural disasters, and federal officials use them to determine the severity of a hurricane, tornado or other hazard on a local area.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has created the "Waffle House Index" to measure the number of victims of a natural disaster. If a waffle house closes or restricts its menu during such threats, the federal government determines that the area has been heavily affected.

"The sooner restaurants, grocery and convenience stores, or banks can reopen, the more local economies will start generating new revenue, signaling a strong recovery for this community."

In an interview with NPR in 2016, Fugate described how FEMA applied the waffle house test.

"They are open most of the time and that was the clue.If a Waffle House is closed because there is a disaster, it is bad. Let's call them red.If they are open but have a limited menu, that's yellow "he said. "If they're green, we're good, keep going, you have not found the wrong things yet."

Waffle House spokesman Pat Warner said Fugate had tested during the 2004 hurricane season in Florida.

"If we are open quickly after the storm, it means that the community is coming back and people have come out, we are returning to that sense of normalcy," Warner told Brooke Baldwin on Wednesday. "After a storm, they are really asking us to be there to help them because they are used to being there the rest of the year."

Waffle House, headquartered in Georgia, has more than 2,000 restaurants, most of them in the south.