Hurricanes, Floods, Wildfires, and Tornado Season Without FEMA

A few things of note as he head into fire and hurricane-heavy months while hoping we don't have a seismic rupture in California or the Pacific Northwest:

Disasters are not confined to jurisdictional lines. Many cross state boundaries. For instance, the 2021 winter storm hit Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Mississippi at the same time. Fires cross boundaries all the time, including international ones. When I lived in AZ, one of the biggest disasters we had to plan for was a major SoCal earthquake as we'd have folks fleeing the area, looking for food and medicine, sleeping in cars, and running out of gas in the desert. If you have a state compact and are relying on your neighbors to come help, it may not happen when they are overwhelmed too.

States simply can't handle the cost of a major disaster. Hurricane Sandy, all the way back in 2012, caused $70.2 billion worth of damages (hurricanes in 2005 and 2018 along with COVID in 2020 and 2021 were all 3-5 times more expensive). Today, only eight states have a budget larger than that $70 billion and a good number are well below that--28 states have budgets that are $30 billion or less and of those, 13 states are under $10 billion. Looking at the three largest state budgets, Hurricane Sandy would be about 1/4 of the current California budget, about 1/3 for Texas, and almost half of New York's.

Small rural states often lack the expertise and equipment necessary to respond to major disasters and again, if your neighbors are experiencing the same thing, where's the help coming from? This is particularly acute for planning, urban search and rescue, disaster medical teams, and complex logistical undertakings.

Federal coordination allows for economies of scale, as it is cheaper for the federal government to buy a bunch of things all at once than it is for each state to buy a few at a time. Federal coordination can also more effectively move idle resources to the incident. A recent RAND study found that out-of-area resource deployment to disasters would be delayed by 35-48 hours under a state model. Also, something that is incredibly important--if you have federal coordination and integration of state and local resources, you enhance interoperability and standard communications and processes, all of which make response easier.

This is your reminder that FEMA was created in the Carter administration after Hurricane Agnes in 1972 and a major tornado outbreak in 1974 clearly showed the problems with the state-centered system. Now, I guess we are going back to that. Once you lose that coordination and economy of scale, you can't just put it back together again in the minutes after a bad thing happens. This will not end well. We need a deliberate and reasoned reform of disaster management in this country to meet the threats we know are here and coming, but this is not that at all. This is going backwards fast.

 

"Oh NO they shut down NOAA, now who will tell us when the hurricanes are coming?" --Space Ghost, Meteorological Genius

 

NOAA is too slow, outdated, stupid. Data moves in milliseconds. Newbies see data and wow, so impressed - hey guys, that hurricane was American-made.

 

Obviously it makes no sense for Trump to make cuts to agencies that exist to protect life and property.

But I would not be surprised (not that he would admit it) that Trump's cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service are vindictive in nature.

They had to correct his mistake in "Alabama in the cone of uncertainty"* and he spent a week or more fighting them. This is his payback.

* - And yet people still live in a pro-Trump bubble. But considering where they get their information (FOX "News", pastors who won't offend them lest they take their tithes elsewhere), well......

 

NOAA is being weakened because it challenges the "climate change is a hoax" narrative. Its free, public data undercuts both climate denial and the business model of for-profit AI weather services.

Project 2025 and similar "conservative" plans aren’t about efficiency. They’re about sidelining public science and clearing the way for donor-driven profit.

 

Potentially dumb post on my end but, do we pay for use of the "European Model"
It seems like every snowstorm we get up here there are two predictions. One by NOAA and the European model.
I know that is over simplification on my end

He is going to tell everyone that there is no need for NOAA, we are going to use the European model.

 

Perfect for "Made in America"

ECMWF high-resolution data requires a commercial license. Low-resolution data is publicly available for free.

https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/accessing-forecasts/payment-rules-and-options/tariffs

 

I'm sure if states buy enough Trump coin, they'll get the FEMA approval.

 

What happened before 1/20 is that NWS meteorologists in local forecast offices would get the "grids" from large model outputs and then spend hours going over them and adjusting for local topography, wind patterns, and other variables to come up with the local forecast. For instance, a large model isn't going to know that a southwest wind changes when it hits a certain watershed. A large model isn't taking urban heat islands into full account. Nor is it going to be as precise for potential tornado outbreaks as a human-crafted forecast will. It is exacting and specialized work that usually requires two meteorologists.

They'd then take the local forecast and apply it to special situations. Forecast offices that have coastal components would have a marine desk that just focused on forecasts and tracking weather for maritime concerns. Offices in the western US might have had a snow/avalanche desk in the winter and a fire desk in the summer. Ones in the Midwest might have a T-storm/tornado desk while those along the Gulf of Mexico would have a hurricane desk. There was also a public desk that pushed the info out and answered calls and social media inquiries. All this required the forecast floor to be staffed by four people from 8 AM to midnight and two night shifters from midnight until 8 AM. So, you had 10 people working forecasts desks every 24 hours, a Meteorologist-in-Charge who supervised the office, electronic techs who maintained all the equipment, a river coordinator who kept up the river gauges and often maintained the volunteer relationships of all the folks who send in their observations, a science officer who helped integrate new tech and validate new forecast methods, and an outreach meteorologist who would do most of the public speaking to stakeholder groups along with media interviews. When you were not working a desk, you'd spend time training on some new thing or working on a project. As an example, one met I know has been working with a group around the country to try to find ways to better predict lightning.

What happens now is that because of the personnel reductions, many offices have been ordered to just go off of the grids--don't do any of the extra stuff for your local area that you did until a few months ago. Also, staffing is reduced in many offices such that they can't staff the specialized desks anymore. This is why local forecasts appear to be less exact than they were. Outreach and public availability is way down in many offices. Finally, the reductions mean special projects and science integration just aren't happening. The NWS is already significantly degraded and what's left is frozen in time. Intentionally so. It is, in the truest sense of the word, a travesty.

Also, it remains to be seen how many incident meteorologists will be available as we roll into the fire and hurricane heavy months. IMETs are usually local forecast office employees who volunteer to deploy to a disaster. Among other things, they are key to keeping responders safe. I suspect we will not have an IMET on every large fire as has been the practice in the past. This will mean inexact forecasts for the fire area, and less monitoring of weather events that may affect the fire. It will delay decision-making and in a worst-case scenario, cost lives.

This is a pretty good and detailed vid about incident meteorologists:

 

I had no clue.......excellent post, Thanks for explaining.........I think we're in for a world of hurt. And if trumpy won't even give Huckabee money from the tornados, if we get hit I hope wheels can beg. Not helping Americans who are devastated by natural disasters is just un-American

 

Unlikely to get help from Canada this year, even if we were on good terms. I doubt FEMA or this administration will do anything to help states who get smoke intrusions from Canada.

 

When did the WSJ acquire The Onion? Or maybe the real question is: when did FEMA acquire The Onion?

Because this isn’t satire. The dice have been rolled with a chaos agent, and now confusion feeds confusion. The US government is left reacting in real time, playing guinea pig to the consequences.


FEMA Scraps New Hurricane Plan and Reverts to Last Year’s - WSJ

WASHINGTON—Federal Emergency Management Agency officials are scrapping a hurricane-response plan that its recently appointed leader, David Richardson, had said was close to completion, according to agency staff.

With hurricane season kicking off this month, Richardson told staff Monday that the agency would be returning to the same guidance for hurricane response as last year. Some were confused how that would be possible, given the agency had already eliminated key programs and sharply cut its workforce.

For example, FEMA’s hurricane guidance typically includes plans for staffers who go door-to-door helping storm survivors. But that program has been rolled back, leaving it unclear how the agency should now adjust those operations, which could have a domino effect on other responses.

Richardson told FEMA staff in a Monday call that he didn’t want to create a new plan that might contradict what a newly created FEMA review council, co-chaired by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, might propose.

“Here’s the guidance,” Richardson said, according to participants. “It’s the same as it was last year,” he added.

The new FEMA leader suggested he recently learned there was an annual hurricane season, stunning members of the workforce of the agency tasked with responding to disasters. He has expressed surprise in meetings at the scope of the agency’s mission, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

“Yesterday, as everybody knows, [was the] first day of hurricane season,” Richardson said. “I didn’t realize it was a season.”

Hurricane season lasts from June 1 through the end of November.

...

Tierney, a longtimer at FEMA who served as regional administrator for the FEMA area that includes states such as Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland, told staff that she was leaving because “the current approach lacks a clear end state or plan and has been done recklessly without regard to our current statutory or moral obligations to the American people,” according to a copy of the message seen by the Journal. She also called the staff shake-ups traumatizing for the workforce.

FEMA’s leadership has been trying to balance pressure from the White House to make significant changes toward diminishing the agency’s role, while also making sure there is an adequate-level of response to disasters, staffers say.

FEMA employees have said the agency is months behind schedule in its preparations for the hurricane season, which is expected to have above-normal activity.

The agency has separately been working on a bigger plan that would call for a new approach to hurricane response tactics that would advance the president’s goal of transferring more responsibility for responding to major disasters from the White House to the states. Those changes are in response to a Jan. 24 executive order signed by Trump that established the FEMA review council.

Several top FEMA officials have departed the agency in recent weeks, as Richardson has brought on staff from the Department of Homeland Security, according to personnel announcement emails sent to agency employees. Those DHS officials, many of whom don’t have emergency-management experience, have been largely in charge of crafting the agency’s new approach, according to people familiar with the matter.

 

Guys Im scared. I live in FL and hurricane season just started. Who is going to tell me a hurricane is coming? Should I camp out in the water isle at walmart for the best indicator? Maybe the bread and milk isle?
Also, without FEMA, who is going to reject my $200 claim for hurricane damage?

I feel like society has become so calloused

 

Simple thoughts from a simple person. The stupid are killing us.

 

Tell me you know nothing about FEMA (or anything for that matter) w/out telling me you know nothing about FEMA

 

Do you *literally* not ever shut the **** up?

Or do you just keep saying things about things that you know nothing about yet once again?

 

Ask the people who have been in the last several major diaster zones how much FEMA has helped them. Its yet another incompetent government organization supported by incompetent people.