Hurricane Beryl has deeply impacted residents of Houston, Texas. While power companies have promised that they are trying to return to normal services as fast as possible, many in the city are still without power.
“Power outages peaked at 2.7 million customers after the storm made landfall Monday, according to PowerOutage.us,” reads a piece in the Associated Press. “As of late Wednesday afternoon, there were 1.6 million customers without power in the Houston area, including 1.3 million CenterPoint customers.”
One issue exacerbating the problem is that the city’s ability to track outages has been plagued with issues. As a result, some people began relying on the Whataburger status map as a sort of outage indicator; if a store was open, it was likely that that area had power, but if it was closed, power was likely still absent.
Whataburger has become a refuge for Houston residents in more ways than one, as a recent TikTok video shows.
Long lines at Houston Whataburger
In a video with over 1.5 million views as of Friday, TikTok user Wendy (@wendygarcia5705) shows a Whataburger line that extends far from the restaurant.
“Still no power and everyone wants ‘Whataburger’!!” she writes in the caption of the video.
In a comment, Wendy explains why so many are gathering at the chain restaurant.
“2.3 million ppl were out of power including grocery stores and gas stations Whataburger was running on generators so ppl wanted to be in ac in 100 degree weather and get burgers,” she wrote.
Given this, it’s unsurprising that Wendy isn’t alone in reporting long lines at the popular Texas fast food chain. One user on Reddit’s r/Houston showed a crowd of cars gathering at one of the few open Whataburger locations in the city, while another claimed that they waited in a Whataburger line for 45 minutes as a result of the hurricane.
“I was just there this morning waited in line for 2 hours,” wrote a commenter under Wendy’s video.
However, these wait times are not unique to Whataburger given the current situation, as other commenters noted.
“Line length minimum 50 cars,” explained a Redditor. “Went to KFC last night and it took over an hour and a half.”
The reasoning many of these commenters give for visiting these fast food chains lines up well with Wendy’s explanation.
“In my defense, I don’t have power and it’s still hot af. I’d rather sit in my car’s AC than my house which is more like a sauna and have a tasty treat without cooking,” detailed a TikTok commenter. “This is time well spent!”
@wendygarcia5705 Only in Texas did we just have a hurricane 🌀with almost 100mph winds, Still no power since 4am and the next minute its sunny… Still no power and everyone wants “Whataburger”!!🍔🤷♀️ #hurricane #hurricaneberyl #storm #houston #whataburger @Whataburger ♬ Texas – BigXthaPlug
Commenters shared their support for the workers
In the comments section, many users praised the workers who managed to clock in and do their job despite the difficult circumstances.
“Aww nawwl… I’d clock out expeditiously,” a user said.
“They deserve a higher pay during these times,” added another. “Like storm pay idk.”
“They gone have to pay me double,” shared a third.
“Yet people wonder why fast food workers should have better wages,” offered an additional TikToker. “LOOK AT THIS. LOOK AT IT!”
The Daily Dot reached out to Whataburger and Wendy via email.
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