by ByJess Bidgood
Donald Trump used Hurricane Helene, a powerful storm that devastated parts of the South, including North Carolina and Georgia, as a political football during the campaign trail last year. He repeatedly blamed the federal government of the Biden administration for what he called its response and recovery efforts’ shortcomings.
After flash floods killed over 100 people, Trump’s federal government will come under scrutiny today as urgent search and rescue efforts continue in Central Texas.
Any leader in charge amid a disaster bears accountability. Typically, a president’s initial response is to pledge the federal government’s full support. Trump’s situation is exacerbated by his record and his plans to dismantle key components of the federal disaster response system.
Democrats are already attempting to use those cuts as quick political fodder. However, it is too soon to determine for sure if the disaster response in Texas was influenced by the Trump administration or its predecessors. There are a lot of questions at the moment. As climate change causes storms like the one in Texas to become stronger and more common, finding answers will be crucial.
Normally, my job is to inform you of what we do know. However, I want to take a somewhat different approach today and outline the things we still hope to discover. I contacted my coworker Christopher Flavelle to find out what he believed we should know about the federal government and the flooding. Chris, who has extensive knowledge of climate and disaster management, revealed over the weekend that important positions at the National Weather Service’s Texas headquarters were unfilled when the floods struck. The three questions we talked about are listed below.
Did staffing cuts at the National Weather Service affect the forecast?
The Department of Government Efficiency has pushed staffing cuts across the government, with the National Weather Service being singled out. A workforce that was once as large as 4,000 employees had lost around 600 of them by this spring. Chris stated that a senior hydrologist, a staff forecaster, and a meteorologist in charge were absent from the Weather Service’s San Angelo, Texas, office, which covers some of the areas most affected by the flooding. Both a science officer and a warning coordination meteorologist, who retired on April 30 after accepting an early retirement package used by the Trump administration to cut federal staff, were absent from its nearby San Antonio office, which provides weather forecasts in other flood-affected areas.
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