Did US government cuts contribute to the Texas tragedy?

In the aftermath of the deadly floods in Texas, some Democrats warned of the “consequences” of the Trump administration’s discounts on the workforce of the federal government, including meteorologists, where Senator Chris Murphy said: “The prediction of accurate weather helps to avoid deadly disasters.”

The suggestion is that the discounts may have hindered the ability of national weather service (NWS) – the government agency that provides weather forecasts in the United States – to predict the floods and raise the alarm adequately.

But the White House press secretary Caroline Levit said on Monday: “These offices [of the NWS] She was a good employee … So any claims, on the contrary, are completely wrong. “

The BBC studied verification of the impact of discounts during President Trump’s era in this field, and while there was a decrease in the workforce in NWS, the experts we talked with said that the employment available in Texas floods was sufficient.

Trump administration I suggest a 25 % reduction To the current annual budget of ocean and atmosphere (NOAA) of $ 6.1 billion (4.4 billion pounds). NOAA is the agency that oversees NWS.

This will The object is entered into the fiscal year 2026 What begins in October this year – so these special cuts had not contributed to the tragedy of Texas.

However, NWS’s employment levels have already decreased separately by the Trump administration’s efficiency campaign since January.

The Ministry of Governmental efficiency (DOGE), which was previously managed by Elon Musk, provided voluntary repetition, known as acquisitions, as well as early retirement for federal government workers. It also ended the contracts most of those who were under observation.

As a result, about 200 people in NWS got voluntary repetition and chose 300 for early retirement, according to Tom Fahi, director of the NWS Federation. He said that 100 other people were eventually fired from the service.

In total, NWS 600 of its 4,200 employees lost, says Mr. Fahi, causing many offices throughout the country without the necessary employment.

In April, Associated Press News Agency She said that she had witnessed the data collected by NWS employees, which turned out that half of its offices had a vacant rate of 20 % – twice the rate of the previous contract.

Nevertheless, the BBC Climate experts told NWS expectations and flood warnings last week in Texas was enough as expected.

“The expectations and warnings were played in a natural way. The challenge that this event faced was very difficult to predict this type of translated extremist rain,” says Avantica Gori, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University in Texas.

“I don’t think employment issues contributed directly to this event. They got hours and warnings,” says Andy Hazleton, the climate scientist who designed the hurricane paths in NOAA until he was expelled during the demobilization of the workers in February.

However, some experts have suggested that employment discounts may have hindered the ability of the local NWS offices in Texas to coordinate effectively with local emergency services.

“There is a real question about whether the weather information connection has occurred in an optimal way,” says Daniel Soyen, Climate at the University of California Los Angeles.

“Perhaps the effect was partially avoided if some people in the weather service responsible for making these connections are still working – which they were not in some of these local offices,” he added.

According to the offices of San Angelo and San Antonio, which cover the areas affected by the floods, had some vacancies.

For example, The website of San Antonio’s office lists several jobs as vacantIncluding two meteorological experts.

The director of the New South Wales BBC Federation was verified that the San Angelo office was missing the major hydros specialists, a scientist who specializes in flooding events.

Mr. Fahi said that the San Antonio office also lacks a “warning coordination specialist”, which coordinates communications between local prediction offices and emergency management services in societies.

However, he pointed out that both offices have temporarily raised their employees in anticipation of the dangerous weather event, which is typical in these circumstances.

“NWS Weather’s offices expected the NWS offices in Austin/San Antonio and San Angelo, Texas, additional experts in the service during the catastrophic flood event,” Eric Corsors, NWS spokeswoman, said in a BBC. “All expectations and warnings were issued in time,” she added.

The meteorologist NWS Jason Rooney, who covers the San Antonio region, said in a statement that where the office usually has two of those who are in service during the clear weather, they had “up to five employees.”

When asked on Sunday if the government’s discounts had left the main vacancies vacancies in NWS, President Trump told reporters: “No, they did not.”

In video Share thousands of times on social mediaThe American meteorologist John Morales said: “There was a 20 % decrease in the weather balloon versions, and the release of … What we started to see is that the quality of expectations is degraded.”

Some social media users refer to Mr. Morales’s words as evidence that budget discounts have a limited predictive ability to anticipate harsh weather events such as floods in Kiir Province, Texas.

Weather balloons are an important tool used by meteorologists to collect weather data – from temperatures to humidity, pressure or wind speed – from the upper atmosphere.

In the United States, NWS stations are usually launched twice a day.

In a series of general data that has been released since February, NWS confirmed that it was either suspended or less than the release of the weather balloon in at least 11 locations across the country, which attributed to the lack of employees in local weather offices.

However, there is no evidence indicating that any of these changes directly affected the release of the weather balloon in areas affected by the floods in Texas.

The data available to the public shows thisIn the period before the floods, the release of the weather balloon was performed as planned in DEL RIO, the closest launch station to the flood center, and the collection of data that informed the weather forecasts that experts say is as sufficient as possible.