Ominous Real World Effects Of NOAA/NWS Cutbacks Beginning To Show

Real effects of Trump administration cutbacks at 
NOAA are now starting to be felt, and it's going
to keep getting worse and worse. 

 At this point, I'd be willing to wager that the forecasts issued by the National Weather Service are now less accurate and less thorough then they were before Donald Trump took office. 

Between the firings, the slashing of funding, and the voluntary buyouts - another 300 National Weather Service employees were expected to take the latest buyout this past week - the NWS is already crippled. 

I fear the short staffing is already leading to missed forecasts during spells of dangerous weather. And this will only keep getting worse

Eight of the 122 NWS local offices across the nation will have seven or fewer meteorologists doing the work of 12 to 15 people, reports the Washington Post. 

Some of the worst staff shortages are in places where fast-developing and fast-evolving tornadoes, severe storms and flash floods are most common, especially this time of year. These offices include Kansas City, Louisville, Des Moines, Grand Rapids and Omaha. 

The Omaha National Weather Service just recently had to deal with an outbreak of tornadoes and exceptionally destructive hail storms. Those storms required careful monitoring of a complex set of severe storms and quick warnings to the public.  

The Omaha office still managed to do an excellent job of warning residents. However, a tornado that did not have a National Weather Service warning hit Storm Lake, Iowa, which is Omaha's coverage zone.  Sometimes developing tornadoes are missed by even the most conscientious meteorologist, but I still have to wonder if staffing shortages created the environment to miss signs the Storm Lake tornado was forming. 

Here's how things can get missed, as John Sokich, a recently retired director of congressional affairs for the NWS, explained to USA Today. 

Meteorologists are under particular stress during severe weather, when lives are at stake. '"'You're talking 12-hour shifts and you constantly have to be on point,' he said. 'It's physically draining to keep going like that and something will break. Working through high impact weather events for multiple days presents physical limitations is stressful and mentally draining.'

Even more draining when some of the tools you need to monitor the severe weather are no longer available.  

We've already reported on the reduction of weather balloon launches, which help forecasters understand the complexities in the atmosphere that can tell them when and where dangerous storms will hit. 

The Sacramento, California National Weather Service office will do almost all of its forecasting during days shifts, as the night will be minimally staffed unless severe weather is present. This change means that such things as fire weather watches and winter storm warnings will mostly only be issued during the day. 

If these warnings are not issued in a timely manner, that could give emergency managers left time to prepare for hazardous conditions. 

As I've previously reported, the research arm is taking the biggest hit, as the Trump administration thinks anything remotely related to climate change is off limits, because in Trump's addled mind, climate change doesn't exist.

The Pensacola News Journal sums up the effects of the NOAA research cuts just in Florida: 

"If the proposed budget cuts to NOAA are enacted as is, it would have wide-ranging impacts on climate research, significantly decrease the accuracy of hurricane forecasting, end climate monitoring for farmers reliant on the service and ultimately leave coastal communities, like the entire state of Florida, to fend for themselves during hurricane season."

On an even more macro level, the American Meteorological Association and National Weather Association, released a detailed, grim statement about the cutbacks. 

The statement said in part: 

"Without NOAA research, National Weather Service weather models and products will stagnate, observational data collection will be reduced, public outreach will decrease, undergraduate and graduate student support will drop, and NOAA funding for universities will plummet. 

In effect, the scientific backbone and workforce needed to keep weather forecasts, alerts, and warnings accurate and effective will be drastically undercut with unknown - and yet almost certainly disastrous - consequences for public safety and economic health."

This excellent joint statement between the AMA and NWA give us examples of how this all will affect you:

"Imagine what will  happen to tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings if we don't have a robust national weather radar network? What will happen to reservoir management when critical information on rainfall and runoff goes missing? What will happen when Hurricane Hunter aircraft are delayed or data from their instruments are not available to improve hurricane track and landfall forecasts?

NOAA research affects the lives of American taxpayers every day. It is vital to the work of the National Weather Service and the NOAA mission to predict the environment and share that information with businesses, communities, state and local government, and citizens."

 National Weather Service outreach to the public is being cutback too. The National Weather Service office in Sacramento said it would reduce overnight staffing, stop directly answering its publicly listed phone lines, post less often on social media and delay responses to media requests. 

That's fine I'm sure with the Trump administration, as transparence is anathema to them. 

The Trump administration is trying like hell to keep the effects of the cutbacks secret, as if it somehow won't become obvious to the public.

As evidence, here's a excerpt from the Washington Post:

"The Post spoke with 10 employees across the Weather Service and its parent agencies, NOAA and the Commerce Department, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly. Concerned with leaks to the media, the administration is installing monitoring software on NOAA employees' devices to track their communications, two current employees said."

 It seems the Trump administration has particular enmity toward the heroes in our American story. This administration is screwing over veterans, farmers, health care workers and aid organizations and National Weather Service meteorologists. 

And they are our heroes. 

On most days, the weather is routine and mundane, and we rely on these federal meteorologists just to let us know whether we should take an umbrella or our sunglasses to work with us tomorrow morning. 

Nice, but not critical.

But when the weather gets dangerous, these National Weather Service meteorologists save lives. I'd love to know how many over the years, but it's many, many thousands. How many people saved their own lives over the years because the fled to basements and storm shelters because the National Weather Service told them a tornado was coming?

How many of those people would have died had they not received the tornado warnings? Or not fled the coast because there was no hurricane warning saying you'd better get out or else?  . Or a flash flood was menacing their town?

I was eternally grateful to our meteorologists at the National Weather Service office here in South Burlington during our summer flood disasters in 2023 and 2024. 

The flood of 2023 killed two people in Vermont. The floods of 2024 did exactly the same. But how many people would have been killed or injured had the dire warnings the NWS released not happened? 

Neither the July. 10, 2023 nor the July 11, 2024 flood was a surprise because National Weather Service meteorologists bombarded us with warnings, detailed, accurate forecasts and great advice.

Surprises and inaccurate information are what kill people. Gutting the National Weather Service, and NOAA as a whole will greatly increase the likelihood that these inevitable, scary storms will take us by surprise.

Just more evidence that - false campaign rhetoric to the contrary - Donald Trump and his minions do NOT care about people like you and me. At all.  

Did Factory Supervisors Cause Deaths Of Workers In Tennessee Helene Flood?

Managers at an Impact Plastics plant in Erwin, Tennessee
allegedly did not let employees leave as Hurricane Helene
floodwaters rose around them. This resulted in six deaths.

Another huge disaster, another case in which a major employer did not protect their workers from danger as they should have. 

At the Impact Plastics factory in Erwin, a small town in eastern Tennessee, employees kept working last Friday as waters in the nearby Nolichucky River rose.

Erwin is in the western foothills of the Appalachians, very close to the North Carolina border and right next to the tall mountains that collected two to three feet of rain from Hurricane Helene and a torrential rainstorm that immediately preceded the tropical system. 

They kept working into the power went out and water swirled into the factory's parking lot. Ultimately 11 factory workers and a contractor were swept away as they tried to escape and only five of them were rescued. The others are dead or presumed dead. Not all the bodies have been found. 

There's plenty of credible stories emerging there that plant managers wouldn't let people flee the rising flood waters until it was far too late. 

Here's part of a report in the Knoxville News Sentinel:

"Jacob Ingram has worked at Impact Plastics for near nearly eight months as a mold changer. It's a role, he said, that keeps him on his feet for the entire first shift.

As the waters rose outside, managers wouldn't let employees leave, he said. Instead, managers told people to move their cars away from the rising water. Ingram moved his two separate times because the water wouldn't stop rising. 

'They should've evacuated when we got the flash flood warnings, and when they saw the parking lot,' Ingram told Knox News. 'When we moved our card we should've evacuated then...we asked them if we should evacuate and they told us not yet, it wasn't bad enough. 

'And by the time it was bad enough, it was too late unless you had a four-wheel drive.'"

Ingram went on to tell the paper that he and 10 others fought their way through waist deep water when a semitruck driver called them over and helped them get on an open-bed truck, which was packed full of large flexible gas pipes.

A piece of debris smacked into the truck, knocking a woman off and sweeping her away. Then another piece of debris did exactly the same thing. Now two women were gone. 

Then the truck was hit by a much larger piece of debris, overturning the entire vehicle. Ingram thought to grab onto the plastic gas pipes, because he had seen some other pieces of the material floating downstream rather than sinking. 

Ingram and four other employees floated a half mile downstream until they hit a large pile of debris they could hang on to. An hour after that, a Tennessee National Guard helicopter plucked them from the pile to save them.  

We know one of the women who fell off the truck died. The body of Bertha Mendoza, 56, was found on September 29. Others from the truck are missing. 

Ingram managed to post some harrowing videos on Facebook that make it clear at least to me that employees of Impact Plastics should have been evacuated far sooner. 

Impact Plastics officials are circling the wagons on these damning accounts. As the Associated Press reports:

"Impact Plastics said in a statement Monday that it 'continued monitor weather conditions' Friday and that managers dismissed employees 'when water began to cover the parking lot and the adjacent service road, and the plant lost power.'"

But in a separate interview, Ingram told WVLT: "I actually asked one of the higher ups (if we should leave) and they told me, 'No, not yet.'. They had to ask someone before we was able to leave. Even though it was already above the doors of the cars."

 Ingram told WVLT that employees were made to stay on site for 15 to 20 minutes after the power went out. 

CBS News reported another employee, Robert Jarvis, gave exactly the same account as Ingram.  Jarvis also asked this question during an interview with television station WBIR: "Why would you make us stay there? Why would  you keep us there if you knew it was going to be bad, if you were monitoring it? Why were we still there?"

Well, my cynical but possibly accurate answer is some mucky muck with Impact Plastics somewhere was loathe to let their commodity, I mean human beings, get out of harms way. That is until the power failed, at which point the factory could no longer make revenue. By then, of course, it was too late for many of the employees to flee.  

Or, if I'm more charitable, the culture at Impact Plastics is that supervisors were tyrants, and there's not a lot of jobs in eastern Tennessee so employees were fearful of getting fired for, you know, trying to save their own lives. 

Notice how carefully Impact Plastics statements are worded. The statement said that while most employees left immediately, some remained on or near the premises. Yeah, because by then they were trapped by the raging floodwaters. 

The owner of a manufacturing plant near Impact Plastics had sent his employees home before they could become endangered and tried to drive a piece of heavy equipment to Impact Plastics in a rescue attempt. 

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is now looking into the allegations against Impact Plastics at the direction of a local prosecutor. 

EMPLOYEE DISASTER SAFETY OFTEN IGNORED

I admit part of all this might be Monday morning quarterbacking. I'm sure nobody in Erwin could have imagined things would get that bad that fast.  This is why in the same town, close to 60 people ended up trapped on the roof of a small local hospital as rapids raced around and through the building. 

Still, it fits a pattern in which too often, keeping employees safe during dangerous weather is just a drag on profits, sure to make shareholders unhappy. What's a few dead employees it allows you to buy a second yacht, right?

I've covered other examples like what allegedly happened at Impact Plastics. 

After a deadly tornado outbreak in December, 2021, employees of a Mayfield, Kentucky candle factory hit by a powerful tornado that night said managers would not let them leave to seek safer shelter ahead of the approaching twister. Nine people who were in the factory died in the storm. 

During that same, December, 2021 tornado outbreak, six people died in an Amazon distribution center in Illinois when a tornado hit. Employees there said they were not given the opportunity to seek safer shelter when tornado warnings blared.

In that same tornado, an Amazon driver said she was told by supervisors to keep driving instead of taking shelter despite the fact a tornado warning was in effect.

Also, legislators in Texas and Florida prevented municipalities from enacting ordinances that would have mandated water and rest breaks for outdoor workers toiling in those states' excessive summer heat. 

Which proves that lawmakers and Florida and Texas, and too many corporations, regard especially low wage workers that to them, it's no big deal if a worker dies because of dangerous weather. To them, these workers are not human beings. Just machines to replace when they are "defective" and break down in rough weather conditions. 

I really hope those responsible for the deaths at Impact Plastics are held accountable. 

Texas To Summer Construction Workers: Drop Dead

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation that 
prevents cities in Texas from mandating water
breaks for construction workers toiling in
the state's excessive heat. 

 Politics and politicians in Texas tend to be awful, to put it mildly. 

One of millions of examples came to light this week. 

Apparently, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and a majority of the state's legislature do not care if construction workers die of heat stroke. 

The rule that Abbott signed into law eliminates local ordinances that mandate 10-minute water breaks every four hours for construction workers in hot weather. 

According to the Texas Tribune:

"The law's scope is broad but ordinances that establish breaks in the workplace are one of the explicit targets. The law will nullify ordinances enacted by Austin in 2010 and Dallas in 2015 that establish 10-minute breaks every four hours so that construction workers can drink water and protect themselves from tree sun. It also prevents other cities from passing such rules in the future. San Antonio has been considering a similar ordinance."

Abbott and others justify this by saying that a hodgepodge of local laws and ordinances is a burden on businesses. Which is actually probably true. 

So instead of getting rid of the ordinances, why not establish a blanket statewide law mandating these water breaks?

I guess because the Texas "elite" regards construction workers as just cattle and machines, and who cares if some of them drop dead in the heat? Just replace 'em.  Bonus: The replacement can be paid a lower wage than the lazy bum who had gall to die on a 110 degree afternoon. 

No regard for human life here. Which is ironic given Texas Republicans' obsession with abortion bans. 

Democrats in the Texas legislature did file bills that would create a statewide rule mandating water breaks, but those filings went nowhere in the Republican controlled Texas Statehouse. 

Summertime in Texas makes a Vermont heat wave look like a lovely February ski vacation. Temperatures routinely top 100 degrees in the summer. Humidity drives heat indices into the 110s or higher. Absolutely brutal and dangerous conditions for outdoor workers. 

As Texas Tribune points out:

"Texas is the state where the most workers die from high temperatures, government data shows. At least 42 workers died in Texas between 2011 and 2021 from environmental heat exposure, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Workers' unions claim this data doesn't fully reflect the magnitude of the problem because heat-related deaths are often recorded under a different primary cause of injury."

The new rule signed by Abbott and pushed by Texas Republicans will probably cause more construction industry deaths in Texas.  

"'Construction is a deadly industry. Whatever the minimum protection is, it can save a life. We are talking about a human life,' said Ana Gonzalez, deputy director of policy and politics at the Texas AFL-CIO. 'We will see more deaths, especially in Texas' high temperatures.'" reports the Texas Tribune. 

Given that the majority of Texas construction workers are Hispanic, I also whiff some racism in this deadly new law. 

The elimination of the local water break rules doesn't take effect until September 1, but even the timing of Abbott's signature seems cruel.

He signed the bill as most of Texas is enduring record breaking high temperatures and in many places, oppressive humidity. The heat index in one south Texas town the other day was 135 degrees.

 I wonder how Texas Republicans would do laying asphalt or installing roofs during the excessive heat warnings that are now in place across much of Texas, including the big cities of Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio.

Even that 10-minute water break once every four hours seems woefully inadequate. OSHA does not have heat stress standards for workers, according to the CDC.

However, some states do. 

The CDC recommends employers ensure workers take breaks in the shade and drink plenty of water.  They should schedule hotter jobs during cooler periods of the day, or postpone such work until after a cold front has passed. Construction companies should also provide larger coolers full of chilly water in which worker can immerse their arms and such to lower their body temperature.

And, the CDC says, construction bosses should demand an employee stop work if they are showing signs of heat-related illness. 

 I'm sure a number of Texas construction companies hew to these CDC recommendations.  But I'm also sure other construction companies and other employers don't.  

Every business wants and needs to be profitable. But if the profits come at the cost of heat-related deaths, is the money worth it?

To some employers, Texas lawmakers and Abbott, the answer to that question is apparently "Yes."