Florida Store Operators Gear Up for Long-Term Recovery Efforts in Wake of Hurricane Michael

On Thursday, Florida Panhandle store operators began to asses the damage left in the wake of Hurricane Michael, which tore through the state’s southern cities a day earlier. According to Nation’s Restaurant News , power outages across the panhandle have impeded immediate re-openings even for undamaged stores, an early sign that recovery efforts may be a long-term prospect.

Michael took the state by surprise, rapidly growing in speed and intensity in the days and hours before it made landfall around 1 p.m. on Wednesday. By that time, the Category 4 hurricane had become the third most powerful hurricane in history to hit the mainland United States. Many of the cities hit hardest were still recovering from the damage caused by Hurricane Florence less than two months earlier.

Waffle House, a chain well known for its stubbornness in the face of dire weather conditions, closed 30 restaurants in the storm’s path . As of Thursday, 29 of those locations were still closed. And dozens of other chain restaurants remain shuttered, or worse, throughout the state.

“We're still taking inventory of the damage,” Don Fox, CEO of Firehouse Subs, told Nation’s Restaurant News . “We have four franchise restaurants in the Panama City area that got whacked pretty good (at least one lost the roof to their strip center). Farther inland, and to the west and east, it looks like power outages are the primary problem.”

As of 12 p.m. on Thursday, nearly 400,00 electricity accounts in Florida were without power.