In Search of Power, Texans Ask: Are the Lights on at Whataburger? With no working outage tracker from the Houston area’s main electricity provider, people are turning to the chain’s map of what's open

Comments

• Uli@sopuli.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I mean Waffle House closures are how FEMA tracks hurricane damaged communities in Florida. Now we just need to figure out how to use Denny’s to show how much of California is burnt down.

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  • homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s true, and that’s partly due to the way FEMA is organized and integrated across multiple states.

    With no working outage tracker from the Houston area’s main electricity provider

    That, however, is some bullshit.

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    • Buelldozer@lemmy.today ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That, however, is some bullshit.

      Looks like they rolled out their tracker last night. It’s available here: …arcgis.com/…/195bcf03ae0c491f9f14bf77f2c43420

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  • HootinNHollerin@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Replace dennys with In N out. I haven’t even seen a Denny’s in ages but there’s an in n out in every town

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    • Uli@sopuli.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That was my first thought, but they’re not open 24/7.

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• BubbleMonkey@slrpnk.net ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I lived in Houston during hurricane ike back in like 2008 or whatever, and it wasn’t a super strong storm or anything, but power was out for over a week where I was in Pasadena. My downstairs neighbor and I built a bonfire on our apartment sidewalk to cook up all the freezer/fridge stuff that was thawing it going bad, and invited everyone around to partake. The cops showed up because of the fire, saw it was contained, told us to be careful, took an offered beer, and shot the shit for 20 min.

  I remember going with the neighbors to get bottled water, I’m still not really sure how they heard about it, and it was an all day event to stand around in a shade-free line waiting for the tiny aid package. Fruit, bread, and a case of water. Not like we had anything else to do, but still.

  Frankly I don’t blame people for getting power where they can. Utilities there really are absolute nonsense. And with smart phones being a literal lifesaver now, in addition to just providing -something- to do while power is out, I am not actually terribly surprised.

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• autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is the best summary I could come up with:

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  Want to find a working gas station, a place to eat or someplace with air-conditioning in East Texas after Hurricane Beryl knocked out power to millions on Monday?

  Users on Houston-area Facebook pages and group chats have suggested checking Whataburger’s online map to see which locations of the homegrown fast-food chain are open.

  “You shouldn’t have to resort to a fast-food restaurant app to get information about power,” said Michelle Thibodeaux, who manages Airbnb properties on Galveston Island south of Houston.

  The utility said that its outage map was offline because of technical issues stemming from the May storm that brought destructive winds and heavy rain to Houston.

  Whataburger restaurants are typically open 24 hours a day, and the 164 branches in the Houston area are represented on the chain’s map by an orange-and-white W that’s familiar all across the South.

  Houston’s Office of Emergency Management is “aware of the viral image” of Whataburger’s map being shared, said Brent Taylor, a spokesman, but the agency is not using it to make operational decisions.

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  The original article contains 615 words, the summary contains 173 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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