“Waffle House has a very simple operational philosophy: get open. They never close. They run 24 hours a day,” he said. “They have a corporate philosophy that if there is a hurricane or a storm, they try and get their stores open. It don’t matter if they don’t have power, it don’t matter if you don’t have gas. They have procedures that if they can get a generator in there, they’ll get going. They’ll make coffee with bottled water.”

After the agency’s poor handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, FEMA was the Homer Simpson of federal agencies, a symbol of pitiful incompetence. The storm even created a national punch line after President George W. Bush said at a news conference that his FEMA director, Michael D. Brown, was doing a “heck of a job” even as the agency was bungling its response.

While FEMA is still viewed with caution — and in some places in New York City in the last week, with continued scorn — Mr. Fugate has done much to shore up its image. That is in part simply through self-flagellation, as he races around storm-savaged regions, ticks off statistics about water levels and procures baby formula for a mother in need.

Mr. Fugate — or Mr. Emergency Management, as President Obama referred to him last week — is a straightforward, honey-toned former director of Florida emergency operations who judges the post-storm condition of communities by the viability of their local economic activity. His hyper-focus on local preparation long before disasters hit has been the key to his success, according to several people who have worked with him.

“He speaks the language of first responders because he was one of them,” said Alan Rubin, who oversaw Florida’s economic recovery after Hurricane Andrew. “He doesn’t have to be brought up to speed on what FEMA can do and when they can do it.”