{"id":248118,"date":"2025-07-08T13:43:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T13:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/248118\/"},"modified":"2025-07-08T13:43:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T13:43:08","slug":"deadly-floods-could-be-new-normal-as-trump-guts-federal-agencies-experts-warn-texas-floods-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/248118\/","title":{"rendered":"Deadly floods could be new normal as Trump guts federal agencies, experts warn | Texas floods 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

The deadly Texas floods could signal a new norm in the US, as Donald Trump<\/a> and his allies dismantle crucial federal agencies that help states prepare and respond to extreme weather and other hazards, experts warn.<\/p>\n

More than 100 are dead and dozens more remain missing after flash floods in the parched area known as Texas Hill Country swept away entire holiday camps and homes on Friday night \u2013 in what appears to have been another unremarkable storm that stalled before dumping huge quantities of rain over a short period of time, a phenomenon that has becoming increasingly common as the planet warms.<\/p>\n

It remains unclear why the early warning system failed to result in the timely evacuation of Camp Mystic, where 700 girls were camped on a known flood plain on the Guadalupe River, but there is mounting concern that the chaos and cuts instigated by Trump and his billionaire donor Elon Musk at the National Weather Service (NWS) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) may have contributed to the death toll.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the exact kind of storm that meteorologists, climate scientists, emergency management experts have been talking about and warning about for decades at this point, and there\u2019s absolutely no reason that this won\u2019t happen in other parts of the country. This is what happens when you let climate change run unabated and break apart the emergency management system \u2013 without investing in that system at the local and state level,\u201d said Samantha Montano,<\/a> professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes a lot of money, expertise and time to eliminate risk and make sure that agencies are prepared to respond when a flood situation like in Texas happens. And if you eliminate those preparedness efforts, if you fire the people who do that work, then the response will not be effective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fema was created in 1979 by Jimmy Carter \u2013 precisely because states were struggling to cope with major disasters \u2013 and works closely with state and local government agencies to provide resources, coordination, technical expertise, leadership and communication with the public when they cannot cope alone.<\/p>\n

Upon returning to the White House, Trump immediately began threatening to disband Fema, belittling the agency amid its ongoing efforts to help communities devastated by the Los Angeles wildfires<\/a> and Hurricane Helene<\/a>, the category 4 storm that left at least 230 people dead in southern Appalachia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The threats were followed by a pledge to dismantle Fema at the end of the 2025 hurricane season, without offering any clear plan about what would come next. The cuts are part of the administration\u2019s unsubstantiated claims that the states and private enterprises are capable and best positioned to provide most federal services including weather forecasting, scientific research and emergency management.<\/p>\n

Reports suggest<\/a> that more than a third of Fema\u2019s permanent full-time workforce has been fired or accepted buyouts, including some of its most experienced and knowledgeable leaders who coordinate disaster responses \u2013 which can involve multiple federal agencies for months or years.<\/p>\n

Emergency management and the weather service work hand in hand. At the NWS, more than 600 people have already been laid off or taken early retirement, leading to offices across storm and flood-prone areas of the US to be short<\/a> of meteorologists and round-the-clock staffing cover. The agency has also had to scale back routine weather monitoring.<\/p>\n

Two senior meteorologists at the San Antonio NWS office, which is responsible for forecasting in the Hill Country region, were among the casualties of Musk\u2019s buyouts and layoffs. This included the warning coordination meteorologist, who is usually responsible for liaising with local emergency managers to help translate NWS forecasts into likely impacts that inform local actions such as warnings and evacuation orders.<\/p>\n

But Trump said it was unlikely the staff cuts to the NWS will be reversed, even in the wake of the Texas floods. \u201cI would think not,\u201d the president said on Sunday about a possible reversal. \u201cThis was a thing that happened in seconds. Nobody expected it. Nobody saw it. Very talented people are there, they didn\u2019t see it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Accuweather, the popular commercial weather forecasting services, relies on the NWS for much of its foundational meteorological data and forecasts. Fema often steps in to cover emergency accommodation and reconstruction costs for Americans without adequate insurance and\/or the means to rebuild.<\/p>\n

Reports suggest NWS weather balloons, which assess storm risk by measuring wind speed, humidity, temperature and other conditions that satellites may not detect, have been canceled in recent weeks from Nebraska to Florida due to staff shortages<\/a>. At the busiest time for storm predictions, deadly heatwaves and wildfires, weather service staffing is down by more than 10% and, for the first time in almost half a century, some forecasting offices no longer have 24\/7 cover.<\/p>\n

In May, the NWS office in eastern Kentucky scrambled to cover the overnight forecast as severe storms moved through the region, triggering multiple tornadoes that eventually killed 28 people<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite such threats, the Republican budget bill signed by Trump last week cuts $150m in funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) to help improve future weather forecasts and also shrinks the amount of money to the National Science Foundation, the premier federal agency supporting basic science and engineering research, by 56% next year.<\/p>\n

The 2026 budget makes significant cuts to Noaa including terminating the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which in essence could be the end of the efforts to improve warnings for events like the Texas floods, warned Alan Gerard, former head of the Warning Research and Development Division of the Noaa National Severe Storms Laboratory, speaking on DemocracyNow! on Monday.<\/p>\n

NSF funded research has played a pivotal role in developing early warning systems for all sorts of hazards, but more work is urgently needed to improve local accuracy and community acceptability amid the growing threats due to global heating. There is no other funding source capable of filling this gap.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Hill Country is a desert area with big rivers which have had historic major floods and that are prone to flash flooding \u2013 but like most of rural America do not have gauge systems. Without gauges, the warnings don\u2019t come early enough, and with flash floods every 15 minutes can save lives. This is something we can do better,\u201d <\/strong>said Ryan Thigpen, a flood scientist trying to improve early warning systems in Appalachia .<\/a><\/p>\n

Texas senator Ted Cruz has called for \u201ca better system of warnings to get kids out of harm\u2019s way\u201d in the wake of the disaster, even though he inserted language into the \u201cbig beautiful\u201d bill to slash Noaa\u2019s weather forecasting upgrades. Local officials, too, have sought to distract attention away from Trump\u2019s cuts \u2013 and their support for his plans \u2013 but the lack of leadership at Fema is impossible to ignore especially as Trump plans to visit the area with the secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem, on Friday.<\/p>\n

David Richardson, the acting administrator of Fema, has not traveled to Texas. Richardson, a former US marine with no emergency management experience prior to his appointment in May, is most notable for his warning to agency staff<\/a> to not oppose Trump\u2019s plan for Fema or \u201cI will run right over you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of key people at Fema who worked there for years, decades in many cases, and hold the expertise that is needed to be able to actually move the resources of the agency, are gone. Fema is so depleted, it\u2019s unclear if they are even capable of launching a huge response right now,\u201d said Montano, author of Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the same level as during [hurricane] Helene but there\u2019s already a lot of inaccurate information out there, and Fema is no longer a trusted voice \u2013 we haven\u2019t heard from the administrator, only secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem, which is very unusual. We\u2019re almost at the point where we can say no one\u2019s home at Fema\u2026 there is no trusted voice,\u201d Montano added. <\/p>\n

The turmoil at the federal agencies tasked with predicting and responding to disaster comes as the threat from extreme weather grows due to the human-caused climate crisis. The Texas floods occurred in a warmer, more moisture-laden atmosphere than in the past, with one analysis<\/a> finding that climate change has made conditions 7% wetter and 1.5C hotter than they would\u2019ve been otherwise.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have added a lot of carbon to the atmosphere, and that extra carbon traps energy in the climate system,\u201d said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University. \u201cBecause of this extra energy, every weather event we see now carries some influence from climate change. The only question is how big that influence is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile on Monday the White House described<\/a> the deadly Texas floods as \u201can act of God\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The deadly Texas floods could signal a new norm in the US, as Donald Trump and his allies…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-248118","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114817912239891856","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}