A Texas resident's unexpected discovery in the Whataburger app provided crucial information to others in the Houston area after Hurricane Beryl left millions without power.
As detailed by The Washington Post, Bryan Norton realized that Whataburger's app was a helpful tool for discovering which nearby businesses might still have electricity.
The Whataburger app works as a power outage tracker, handy since the electric company doesn't show a map.
— BBQ Bryan (@BBQBryan) July 9, 2024
Still nearly 1.9 million power outages. pic.twitter.com/d8srWmw1oV
At the time, CenterPoint Energy's power-restoration tracker was down. This left people in the dark about where to obtain food, gas, and other necessities, and how to escape the heat after the Category 1 hurricane had made landfall on July 8.
However, after the 55-year-old tech worker and podcast host found himself craving something comforting, he downloaded the Whataburger app and made an intriguing observation.
"You could see, like, this whole wave of gray and a couple of orange, and they changed little by little," Norton told the Post. "I was like, 'Holy cow! Now we can see the scope of the issue.' Obviously, it's not a perfect tool, but it's pretty solid."
The Tomball resident shared his findings on X, formerly known as Twitter, from his account BBQ Bryan (@BBQBryan). The post took off, with others retweeting the findings more than 6,000 times.
"It's crazy and incredibly ironic that we're leaning on a Texas staple like Whataburger to tell us where the electricity is," Michelle Guillot Thibodeaux told the Post. The 49-year-old used the app to get an idea about the status of her Galveston Airbnb properties, with the orange symbols indicating which Whataburger locations were open.
A CenterPoint spokesperson explained to the news outlet that its outage tracker has been unavailable since May, when another powerful storm created "technical challenges," but the utility provider expects to launch a new version by the end of July.
Extreme weather events aren't unnatural. In fact, weather patterns like El Niño and La Niña can make intense storms more likely. However, human activities have caused global temperatures to rise, supercharging our weather events.
Last year, the United States saw a record number of billion-dollar disasters. To create a more balanced tomorrow, the country has passed legislation to support a cleaner infrastructure, with high-speed rail projects and tax incentives for energy-efficient appliances among the initiatives.
Meanwhile, Whataburger president and chief executive officer Ed Nelson cautioned the Post that the app isn't intended as an outage tracker and should "only be used as a general idea of power availability." However, Nelson said he was happy it was useful.
Norton's comments also highlighted the importance of bringing communities together in times of crisis, with his innovative solution doing more than just connecting people with material needs.
"The fact that Whataburger's app is giving us that bit of hope — well, it doesn't get more Texas than that," Norton told the Post.
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