Texas flood deaths leave some asking whether weather service cuts played role in tragedy
Trump denies job eliminations hampered weather forecasting
Former federal officials and outside experts have warned for months that U.S. President Donald Trump's deep staffing cuts to the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) could endanger lives.
After torrential rains and flash flooding struck in Texas on Friday, the weather service came under fire from local officials who criticized what they described as inadequate forecasts, though most in the Republican-controlled state stopped short of blaming Trump's cuts. Democrats, meanwhile, wasted little time in linking the staff reductions to the disaster, which has killed scores of people.
The NWS office responsible for that region had five staffers on duty as thunderstorms formed over Texas on Thursday evening, the usual number for an overnight shift when severe weather is expected. Current and former NWS officials defended the agency, pointing to urgent flash flood warnings issued in the pre-dawn hours before the river rose.
"This was an exceptional service to come out first with the catastrophic flash flood warning and this shows the awareness of the meteorologists on shift at the NWS office," said Brian LaMarre, who retired at the end of April as the meteorologist-in-charge of the NWS forecast office in Tampa, Fla.
″There is always the challenge of pinpointing extreme values, however, the fact the catastrophic warning was issued first showed the level of urgency."
Lingering questions
Questions remain, however, about the level of co-ordination and communication between NWS and local officials on the night of the disaster.
The Trump administration has cut hundreds of jobs at NWS, with staffing down by at least 20 per cent at nearly half of the 122 NWS field offices nationally and at least a half dozen no longer staffed 24 hours a day. Hundreds more experienced forecasters and senior managers were encouraged to retire early.
The White House also has proposed slashing its parent agency's budget by 27 per cent and eliminating federal research centres focused on studying the world's weather, climate and oceans.
The website for the NWS office for Austin/San Antonio, which covers the region that includes hard-hit Kerr County, shows six of 27 positions are listed as vacant. The vacancies include a key manager responsible for issuing warnings and co-ordinating with local emergency management officials.
Democrats on Monday pressed the Trump administration for details about the cuts. U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded that the administration conduct an inquiry into whether staffing shortages contributed to "the catastrophic loss of life" in Texas.
Meanwhile, Trump said the job cuts did not hamper any weather forecasting.
The raging waters, he said Sunday, were "a thing that happened in seconds. No one expected it. Nobody saw it."
Ex-officials see ongoing risks
Former federal officials and experts have said Trump's indiscriminate job reductions at NWS and other weather-related agencies will result in brain drain that imperils the federal government's ability to issue timely and accurate forecasts. Such predictions can save lives, particularly for those in the path of quick-moving storms.
"This situation is getting to the point where something could break," said Louis Uccellini, a meteorologist who served as NWS director under three U.S. presidents, including during Trump's first term.
"The people are being tired out, working through the night and then being there during the day because the next shift is short-staffed. Anything like that could create a situation in which important elements of forecasts and warnings are missed."
After returning to office in January, Trump issued a series of executive orders empowering the Department of Government Efficiency, initially led by billionaire Elon Musk, to enact sweeping staff reductions and cancel contracts at federal agencies, bypassing significant Congressional oversight.
Though Musk has now departed Washington and had a very public falling-out with Trump, DOGE staffers he hired and the cuts he sought have largely remained.
The cuts follow a decade-long Republican effort to dismantle and privatize many of the duties of U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency within the U.S. Commerce Department that includes the NWS. The reductions have come as Trump has handed top public posts to officials with ties to private companies that stand to profit from hobbling the taxpayer-funded system for predicting the weather.
Project 2025, the conservative governing blueprint that Trump distanced himself from during the 2024 campaign but that he has broadly moved to enact once in office, calls for dismantling NOAA and further commercializing the weather service.
At a pair of Congressional hearings last month, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called it "fake news" that the Trump administration had axed any meteorologists, despite detailed reporting from The Associated Press and other media organizations that chronicled the layoffs.
Despite a broad freeze on federal hiring directed by Trump, NOAA announced last month it would seek to fill more than 100 "mission-critical field positions," as well as plug holes at some regional weather offices by reassigning staff.
Those positions have not yet been publicly posted, though a NOAA spokesperson said Sunday they would be soon.