| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Will be posted to the council's website. | |
| And as various members of the council have repeatedly reiterated, your feedback is both welcome and appreciated. | ||
| If you wish to contact the FEMA Review Council, you can reach out to us at FEMAReview Council at hq.dhs.gov. | ||
| You can also go to our FEMA Review Council website. | ||
| It is dhs.gov/slash FEMA TAC Review TAC Council. | ||
| And without further ado, I'd like to thank Secretary Noam, Secretary Hegset, and Governor Landry for hosting us this week, sir. | ||
| Greatly appreciate your hospitality and to our great CBP partners here at the Customs House who are hosting us for the week. | ||
| Thank you all for your support. | ||
| The FEMA Review Council's second public meeting is hereby closed. | ||
| Thank you all for attending. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And joining us to talk about the Texas floods and disaster preparedness is Richard Spinrad, former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator in the Biden administration and former Commerce Undersecretary for Oceans and Atmosphere, Rick Welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thanks for having me, Mimi. | |
| First, tell us the mission of NOAA. | ||
| What is it meant to do? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, so NOAA I like to think of as being our nation's environmental intelligence agency. | |
| And basically what that means is NOAA is responsible for collection and interpretation of information about the environment, about the oceans, about the climate, about the atmosphere, as well as managing our nation's marine living resources. | ||
| Think of the National Marine Fisheries Service. | ||
| So it sits within the Department of Commerce, and part of its responsibility is to take environmental information and help with economic development. | ||
| But in a nutshell, I believe what NOAA is about is protecting lives, livelihoods, and lifestyles through the use of environmental intelligence. | ||
| So let's go to Texas, the Texas floods. | ||
| There was 10 to 12 inches of rainfell in a few hours. | ||
| The river, the Guadalupe River, swelled more than 26 feet in less than an hour early that morning. | ||
| How unprecedented was that specific flood? | ||
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unidentified
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So this area is known as Flash Flood Alley. | |
| So they do have a history of having very severe flash floods. | ||
| And in fact, back in 1987, they had a very similar kind of flash floods. | ||
| So it's not unprecedented, but a flood of this magnitude is unusual. | ||
| Some people describe it as a 1% or less than 1% probability event. | ||
| This kind of thing can happen in this area, does happen in this area, and will happen in the future as well. | ||
| At this magnitude? | ||
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unidentified
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Perhaps, yes. | |
| And of course, with the impacts that we're seeing with climate change, we're seeing more severe storms. | ||
| So consequently, we can expect to see similar kinds of floods, whether it's next year, 20 years, 50 years from now. | ||
| I can't tell you that. | ||
| But we do know that this kind of event will most likely happen again sometime in the future. | ||
| So let's talk about the warnings that were issued for this particular event. | ||
| The first flood watch had been issued the day before, so on Thursday in the afternoon, and then a warning was issued at 1.14 Central Time in the middle of the night on Friday. | ||
|
unidentified
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What's your opinion of that and how that rolled out? | |
| So this is the National Weather Service doing their job, and their job is to provide as much lead time. | ||
| And I would add, in addition to the watch and the warning that you alluded to, several days beforehand, the Weather Service indicated that there was a higher probability for this kind of event. | ||
| So the watches, warnings, and alerts are formal notifications. | ||
| The Weather Service did their job. | ||
| Clearly, that warning you alluded to, not only did it go out some three to four hours before that wall of water went down the river, but it also used terms like catastrophic and life-threatening. | ||
| So if you received that warning, you would have known that this was an anomalous event, an extreme event, and should have been prepared to take action. | ||
| But that's if you're awake at 1.15 in the morning. | ||
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unidentified
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Well, yeah, I mean, it also went out as what's called a wireless emergency alert. | |
| You probably know those on your phone. | ||
| Some people consider them those annoying screeches that you get when there's lightning. | ||
| It's the same system used for amber alerts as well. | ||
| So yes, if your phone is on, you'll get that WIA. | ||
| You would be awakened. | ||
| You'd have the opportunity to take action. | ||
| Now, when you say take action, is there actionable information there? | ||
| Does it say evacuate or go to higher ground or anything like that? | ||
| Are you supposed to know what to do when you get that alert? | ||
|
unidentified
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So the system is one where the weather service provides the information, the forecast. | |
| The emergency management community, including FEMA, including local sheriffs and fire departments and emergency managers, are the experts at knowing what exactly should I do with this information. | ||
| But the Weather Service, NOAA, works hand in glove with the emergency management community to make sure that those people, those experts know, okay, in this case, we want to evacuate, you want to go to higher ground, or you want a shelter in place in some situations. | ||
| NOAA is not the emergency management expert. | ||
| NOAA and the Weather Service are the experts in providing the information the emergency managers can then interpret as to what actions people should take. | ||
| I want to share with you what Secretary of Homeland Security Christine Noam said at a press conference Saturday. | ||
| She said this, we know that everybody wants more warning time, and that's why we're working to upgrade the technologies that have been neglected by far too long to make sure that families have as much advance notice as possible. | ||
| What's happening with the technology? | ||
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unidentified
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So the technologies that the Secretary alludes to could be any number of things. | |
| Speaking for NOAA and the National Weather Service, the technologies that are central to this capability are things like radars, things like high-performance computing. | ||
| But the other technologies that are part of this whole system are the communications and emergency warnings technologies. | ||
| And I think we've seen a lot of attention to the issue of were there sirens, were there adequate sirens. | ||
| So certainly in the assessments that are going to be done, both at the state level, local level, and within NOAA and the Weather Service, there will be some attention to the full spectrum of technologies that were used from the very earliest stages of developing the forecast to how the warnings were received and acted upon. | ||
| So what, in your opinion, what went wrong? | ||
| Because clearly we have over 100 people dead at this point. | ||
| There's people still missing. | ||
| So that number is expected to rise. | ||
| What could have been done to avoid that? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, and this is heart-wrenching, isn't it, to see the loss of life and the fact that we're still doing recovery efforts to find the bodies. | |
| That, I think, has to be addressed from the sense that how were the warnings received? | ||
| We know the warnings went out. | ||
| Why was it that emergency managers felt they didn't get the information, felt they didn't have what they needed to move on? | ||
| We're going to have to assess the last mile. | ||
| That's really where I think the problems were. | ||
| The warnings go out from the weather forecast offices. | ||
| Are they or are they not being received? | ||
| Is there enough redundancy in the system? | ||
| So if you look, for example, at what happens in the Midwest with tornadoes, a lot of the towns and communities there have access to these WIAs, the wireless emergency alerts, but they also have sirens and they have other mechanisms of getting information to people. | ||
| Is it a matter of having redundant systems, emergency systems to notify people? | ||
| Is it a matter of having enough emergency management experts? | ||
| There's also a question of whether there was adequate connectivity between the warning coordination meteorologist at the Weather Forecast Office, whose responsibility is to work with emergency management and the emergency managers themselves. | ||
| If you'd like to join our conversation with Rick Spinrad, you can give us a call. | ||
| Our lines are Democrats 202748-8000, Republicans 202-748-8001, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We also have a line set aside for Texas residents. | ||
| That's 202748-8003. | ||
| Well, some Texas officials and meteorologists are saying that the recent layoffs, the Doge cuts, impacted this situation in some way and handicapped the response and the preparation efforts. | ||
| What do you think of that? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, there's no question that the Weather Service is understaffed right now. | |
| The Weather Service is operating at about 80 percent of staffing as a result of these terminations and the resignations that Doge has induced. | ||
| Now, the good news is that in the case of these weather forecast offices, there are two that were directly involved in the floods in Texas, they were able to surge staff to make sure they were staffed up. | ||
| However, as I pointed out a minute ago, one of the positions that was vacated as a result of these cuts was the warning coordination meteorologist at one of these weather forecast offices. | ||
| What is a warning coordination? | ||
|
unidentified
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The warning coordination meteorologist is the person who is a trained meteorologist who is in direct connection with the emergency manager, who can say the flooding is going to start here. | |
| We think it's going to be this intense. | ||
| You might want to make sure the evacuations start over there. | ||
| It's probably going to hit at 5.33 in the morning. | ||
| All of the information a meteorologist has that an emergency manager needs. | ||
| And more importantly, that there is an open line of communication between the emergency managers. | ||
| So they can say, hey, we've got a situation here. | ||
| We need to make a choice. | ||
| What's your recommendation based on the meteorology? | ||
| So that person is dedicated to what we call decision support, helping the emergency managers, while the forecasters are busy doing their thing, improving the forecast. | ||
| So the WCM is the liaison with the emergency management manager. | ||
| And that WCM was not there? | ||
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unidentified
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That person left the agency as a result of the administration's push for early retirements and voluntary separation. | |
| The position was vacant. | ||
| It had been filled by somebody with over 30 years' experience. | ||
| Now, they may have had somebody acting in that capacity, but that says nothing to the experience. | ||
| So you can have somebody covering the responsibility, but if they don't have the 30 years of experience in emergency management, you're losing a critical link, in my opinion. | ||
| So consequently, the assessment will give us the true understanding of where links may have been broken, where they may have been shortcomings in how the process worked. | ||
| But I'm convinced that the staff cuts were a contributing factor to the lack of coordination, if you will, with emergency management. | ||
| Let's take a look at NOAA's FY 2026 budget, and I'll get your take on it. | ||
| The cuts, it cuts approximately 17 percent of the workforce after recently firing the probationary employees, shrinks the current workforce of more than 12,000 full-time employees down to 10,000, and it cuts about $1.8 billion from its annual budget. | ||
| That's almost 30 percent of a reduction, and it eliminates the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, that last part, all of those are greatly damaging. | |
| When I was the administrator, we were making the argument that the 12,000 personnel was less than what was needed for the full mission. | ||
| And in fact, again, when I was administrator, we had 12,000 federal employees and almost the same number of contractors working side by side with federal employees. | ||
| That alone tells you that the agency was already understaffed. | ||
| So now saying, hey, let's cut even further starts compromising the ability for the agency to do its mission. | ||
| The last piece you alluded to, the elimination of NOAA's research capability, means basically shuttering, shutting down, rather, the 10 laboratories that NOAA operates, including labs like the National Severe Storms Lab in Norman, Oklahoma. | ||
| Many people may remember that one from the Twisters movies, but that's the laboratory that created the latest and greatest capabilities for predicting extreme precipitation events like the one we just saw in Texas, like we're seeing now in other parts of the country. | ||
| So as we cut the research capability, what that basically translates to is you are guaranteeing that you will never get any better weather service than what you currently have right now. | ||
| So when you say that these cuts in general, not just the closing of that office, but the cuts in general, are damaging. | ||
| Break that down for us. | ||
| What does that mean for me on a day-to-day basis? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, it means things like think about how we've made improvements in weather forecasting as they affect air travel. | |
| Right now, last year I just checked, less than one-third of the delays or cancellations in air travel were attributable to weather. | ||
| That's half the percentage it was, say, 20 years ago. | ||
| So for everyday people who are traveling all over all the time, you can pretty much guarantee that you'll see more delays, more cancellations in air travel. | ||
| The quality of the forecasts for things like hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, droughts in the upper Midwest, floods, heat waves, the quality and the accuracy and the timeliness of those forecasts will be compromised. | ||
| No question about it. | ||
| Let's talk to callers and we'll start with Rich, a Republican in Marion, Ohio. | ||
| Good morning, Rich. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Boy, we need every good idea coming out to solve this problem. | ||
| It seems like if we had different alarm systems, just weren't radios, but lights connected into where we hit different levels of emergency, like we have yellow level, high level, because it's hard to sort out which one they really need to do. | ||
| The other thing is we've got to learn from the past. | ||
| We just don't learn the lessons. | ||
| From Chicago, they learned when you build a city from one end to the other with wood. | ||
| You've got big problems. | ||
| Well, we still have big problems in our woods. | ||
| We don't have fire breaks in our woods. | ||
| When we do have a fire, we don't have the water to put them out. | ||
| Look at California. | ||
| All the smoke that that caused and the chance to eliminate that and to log out that dead wood. | ||
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unidentified
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The other things in volcanoes, we could get geothermal off that to get that. | |
| We can't solve every problem. | ||
| There's still going to be big problems. | ||
| The other thing is getting good alerts. | ||
| I'll hang up, listen to your answer. | ||
| Yes, thank you. | ||
| I think your first point with respect to emergency systems, not only having easily understandable systems, but you implied that we should have redundant systems, and I couldn't agree more. | ||
| It's the belt and suspenders approach, if you will. | ||
| So yes, there should be NOAA weather radios. | ||
| You should have cell phones that can pick up these WIA alerts, but you also should have sirens. | ||
| So I think the concept you alluded to, Rich, is one we're going to see in future developments. | ||
| Your other point about learning from the past, that actually is the concept behind the use of AI. | ||
| And I am an advocate for the use of AI in improving our weather forecasting. | ||
| And part of what AI does is it takes a look at all the history of storms. | ||
| How does this storm look compare to something we might have seen 20 years ago? | ||
| And can we use that knowledge effectively? | ||
| So I think both of your comments are spot on. | ||
| Let's talk to Thomas, Humboldt, Texas, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Thomas. | ||
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unidentified
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Morning, everyone. | |
| I'm sorry to hear about the kids here in Texas. | ||
| And I hope we feel the same way that we feel about the kids in Gaza. | ||
| That being said, remember, hey, Rich, remember back in the day you had forest rangers and everybody had a CB radio. | ||
| You know, hey, man, weather's getting bad, so on and so forth. | ||
| How easy to get to issue CBs. | ||
| I mean, everything else is down, but you have to CB radio. | ||
| But listen, the people in Iowa and Ohio who've been hit by hurricanes and tornadoes is getting worse. | ||
| September is not even here yet. | ||
| And then you're cutting employees from NOAA. | ||
| I mean, please explain to these people what NOAA actually does. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Oh, listen. | ||
| Do we still have the European models? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yes, your last comment, Thomas. | ||
| We do have the European models, and we work closely with the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting, which is the generator of those models. | ||
| And quite honestly, one of the most important things in weather forecasting is having many models. | ||
| This is not a competition to have just one. | ||
| You want to have many so that you can look at the combinations and see if one is picking up something, another one might not. | ||
| So, yeah, the European model is still an active component of ensemble, if you will. | ||
| You talked about CB radios. | ||
| Cell phones, obviously, are the technology that a lot of people are relying on right now. | ||
| Most people have cell phones or are near someone who has cell phones. | ||
| Certainly all emergency managers have cell phones. | ||
| So part of this wireless emergency alert, WIA, that I alluded to is a system that was set up years ago, a very effective system for making sure that everyone can get that alert. | ||
| And again, most of the listeners here have probably heard an alert like that in your area when you've had hail or lightning or again an amber alert. | ||
| So I think the point is between NOAA weather radio, between cell phones, between sirens, having multiple kinds of alert systems is how we're going to get to a better place and lose fewer lives. | ||
| You said before that that area of Texas is called Flash Flood Alley. | ||
| Should there be, I mean, camps in Flash Flood Alley? | ||
| Should there be, you know, people allowed to camp or have to build homes there? | ||
| I mean, is that maybe part of the solution that you don't have people around there? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, I certainly am not an expert in the sort of regulations as to where people can build, but one of the things we argued for heavily in NOAA is that we make sure to work with community planners, zoning commissioners, civil engineers to make sure they understand that. | |
| And the interesting thing, maybe I would say, is that if you look at what's happened in hurricane-prone areas of the country, because of NOAA's contributions to understanding peak winds and storm surge, building codes have changed. | ||
| And all of us have seen the imagery from areas where hurricanes have hit and some homes survived and some did not. | ||
| So our job at NOAA historically would be to advise the experts on building codes, on construction materials, on civil engineering as to what should or should not be allowed in a particular area based on the propensity for storms. | ||
| Chris is in San Antonio, Texas, a Republican. | ||
| Chris, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| You know, I know that river. | ||
| I've swam in that river. | ||
| I've seen that river get high. | ||
| The gentleman's not shooting straight, and I don't appreciate him not shooting straight. | ||
| First of all, in 1987, I was a lifeguard back in the day, and those poor girls that drowned that day, they went through a low water crossing in a bus. | ||
| And there was rain out there, and it causes flooding. | ||
| It always happens. | ||
| A bigger flood was in the 70s, the late 70s. | ||
| Canyon Lake was lower, and more water came down that Guadalupe than the 87 flood he was talking about. | ||
| And that's the problem. | ||
| When you trust people at the federal government that are more concerned about political points than really fixing the job, that's the whole problem. | ||
| I was up that night and I watched the radar and you saw all the rain fall in that area. | ||
| And right there, if anybody watching the radar at NOAA or local officials, right when they saw that water, this is what happens when 8, 10, 20 inches falls at one time on that river. | ||
| Someone's got to get down there to the river to see if it's rising and then send out the alarm. | ||
| But to sit there and say doge cuts and this and that, this river's always done it. | ||
| It's always going to do it. | ||
| And you can't blame it on whoever's president. | ||
| All right, Chris, let's get a response. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, and Chris, I actually agree with you, especially when you talked about getting the information to the people who are in harm's way. | |
| And what I'm saying is that for some reason, the best forecast, the best information, that warning went out three and a half hours before the major part of the flood hit. | ||
| Why did the warning not get received? | ||
| Why did somebody not go into the area and start ensuring evacuations? | ||
| Your experience is exactly the valuable contribution. | ||
| There are people who have experience like you who ought to be able to say, hey, when we see a warning like this three hours beforehand, we need to make sure that line of communication with the emergency managers, the sheriff's office, the police department, the emergency responders is there so that those kids could safely evacuate. | ||
| So I think we do need to learn from the experiences in the past. | ||
| Let's talk to Dan in Severn, Maryland, Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I would like to ask, given that you mentioned there will be cuts in the funding and the cuts in personnel of NOAA and the National Weather Service. | ||
| And also the data collection is being done less often in order to reduce costs. | ||
| Wouldn't that impact in the future the quality of the forecast? | ||
| And what are we doing to prevent events like this in the future? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, I want to make sure I understand because I would argue that the politics issue should be separate from the science and the technology and the operations of weather forecasting. | ||
| I am one of the very few people who served as a political appointee as the head of NOAA, but more importantly, I'm a trained environmental scientist. | ||
| I'm an oceanographer and I was a scientist at NOAA for 20 years before I became the administrator. | ||
| It's the 11,975 scientists and technologists and engineers at an agency like NOAA who are going to make the difference, not the 25 political appointees. | ||
| And so the fact that the weather service has been around for about 140 years is evidence of the fact that we can continue operating regardless of which administration is in place. | ||
| With respect to how do we keep this from happening in the future, I think a lot of it depends on the kinds of improvements in technology, improvements in communication mechanisms, taking lessons learned from other disasters elsewhere in the world and in the nation and saying how might this be applied in a place like Texas. | ||
| So learn from the past, apply the latest technology, and make sure you've got the best communications with the emergency managers. | ||
| So would the National Weather Service, the researchers there, know how bad, like at what point would they know how bad this flood is actually going to be? | ||
| Was it three hours before it hit? | ||
| Was it before that? | ||
| And would they know, for instance, okay, if people don't evacuate, they're going to die? | ||
|
unidentified
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So the way the system is set up, it's sort of a tiered. | |
| The first thing is that watch, and the watch is kind of warning, hey, pay attention. | ||
| A lot of people say I get information regularly on my phone. | ||
| I do too. | ||
| Do I pay attention to every bit of information I get? | ||
| Probably not. | ||
| But when I see a watch, it tells me I need to pay closer attention. | ||
| The warning, which came in three to four hours beforehand, that's the red flag. | ||
| That's the time to start planning, to take action, time to take action. | ||
| And the fact that terms like catastrophic are included and the fact that the wireless emergency alert was sent out, that puts you at a whole different level. | ||
| This is not unlike if your kids at a softball game on a Friday afternoon and you get a watch that there might be thunderstorms. | ||
| You ought to prepare to know where your car is parked so you can get back to your car. | ||
| When a warning hits, you haul out of there. | ||
| You get the kids out of there because that's the indication that the threat is imminent. | ||
| So the structure that's been put in place of watches, warnings, and alerts, the warnings and alerts in this case, about three hours beforehand, the watch, about 18 to 24 hours beforehand. | ||
| And as I said, even a couple of days beforehand, there were indications that there could be a higher probability for flooding. | ||
| So I think the timeframes are different. | ||
| Obviously, for tornadoes, we're talking minutes, not hours in most cases. | ||
| So it depends on the kind of storm. | ||
| For hurricanes, it's days. | ||
| Depends on the kind of threat that we're seeing. | ||
| I want to play you, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a portion of what he said at a press briefing about whether Texas officials were ready for the flood. | ||
| So your question is about what local officials knew. | ||
| You'd have to ask that. | ||
| What the state was aware of, the state was aware that there was a possible serious flooding event days in advance, and we pre-positioned assets and resources and personnel. | ||
| And remember, the flood began on Friday morning. | ||
| We originally positioned those assets, resources, and personnel on Wednesday. | ||
| Then when greater clarity was discerned on Thursday, we moved them closer, added, and made sure that we had adequate supply going into Friday. | ||
| So we were ready with the resources on the ground to be able to quickly respond. | ||
| Some people say, well, we responded so fast. | ||
| One reason we did respond fast is because we had assets here already. | ||
| That said, we didn't know the magnitude of the storm. | ||
| We knew there was a flash flood warning. | ||
| And if you heard a flash flood warning, no one would know that that would be a 30-foot high tsunami wall of water, I don't think. | ||
| But all I can tell you is what we, the information we had, the state had, and that we acted on, was information that catalyzed us to begin putting assets and resources in place two days before the event happened. | ||
| What do you think of that, Rick? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, so I think the important point that the governor made was they did have several days warning for pre-positioning assets, and that's an important factor. | |
| You don't want to be calling up the emergency managers just before the event saying, hey, send trucks, send water, send rescue workers. | ||
| So that's an important point. | ||
| The other point the governor made was that they were able to localize when the watch came on Thursday afternoon at 1 o'clock and then be even more specific by the time the warning came at 1 in the morning on Friday. | ||
| The question of the magnitude: a flash flood warning is a flash flood warning. | ||
| And so, consequently, knowing that you are going to have a threat, certainly to all residents, all campers who are right on the river, should be sufficient to start taking action. | ||
| But again, only if the emergency managers receive the information. | ||
| And the part the governor implied and alluded to there was that some managers did get information, some did not. | ||
| That's what an assessment is going to have to sort out. | ||
| Let's talk to Nick in Albany, New York. | ||
| Republican, good morning, Nick. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi. | |
| Just to preface my knowledge of the flooding and all that, it's a little very sparse, so forgive me if I make any mistakes. | ||
| But I had a question about your opinions on public alerting. | ||
| I have a little bit of knowledge in that field. | ||
| I'm not sure what kinds of messages were sent by local emergency managers, whether they were WIA or IPOS messages. | ||
| But what I have known is, I do know, is that many local municipalities are either inexperienced with the software, whether it be from one of the many vendors for sending the messages. | ||
| I'm a fan of the work of Dr. Jeanette Sutton. | ||
| A lot of them have trouble from what I've seen on PBS Warren, you know, following what we've seen as recommended best practices. | ||
| And I think also the specter of that Hawaiian missile alert haunts a lot of them, where there's kind of a reticence at the local level to send these warnings on top of a lack of engagement from the public, especially from voluntary sign-up IPOS services. | ||
| Do you think some kind of national framework to improve best practices for public alerting is needed? | ||
| And I guess as a secondary appendix question, if you have time, do you think the embedding of meteorologists in state and perhaps even local emergency management agencies, would that have a benefit to more accurate response and alerting? | ||
| Yeah, thank you, Nick. | ||
| With respect to public alerting, you've really hit on what we've learned in the last 20 years is a critical component. | ||
| And it boils down to behavioral science. | ||
| That is, what do people do with these alerts? | ||
| And in many cases, a false alarm causes great problems. | ||
| You alluded to the problem in Hawaii. | ||
| So one of the things the federal government writ large, NOAA specifically, has done the last few years, is try to bring in more behavioral scientists. | ||
| This is part of the research effort. | ||
| How is it best to send a message? | ||
| What kind of message resonates best with people? | ||
| Who should send the message? | ||
| A lot of folks may not necessarily trust a federal employee working for the weather service, but they do trust that sheriff's office in their town. | ||
| So how do you make sure the weather service and the sheriff's office are well connected? | ||
| So there's a lot of work to be done with respect to behavioral sciences and how to get that warning and alert out to people in the most effective manner. | ||
| Your second question on embedding meteorologists, Weather Service does that. | ||
| They have a program called Incident Meteorologists, or IMETS. | ||
| These are meteorologists who are trained to go sit in the command center. | ||
| They are most typically used these days for wildfires, and that's for a few reasons. | ||
| Wildfires create their own weather. | ||
| It's best to have a meteorologist in the command center. | ||
| For something like this, there are plenty of meteorologists, well-qualified forecasters in the local forecast offices. | ||
| But having them, if not sitting in the command center, certainly in live, constant communication with the command center and the emergency managers, is a critical component of the success of the operation. | ||
| So right now at NOAA, there is currently no confirmed administrator. | ||
| However, Dr. Neil Jacobs has been nominated and his hearings are actually going to happen right after this program. | ||
| What do you think of him? | ||
| I mean, do you know who he is? | ||
| What do you think of his background and his qualifications? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know Dr. Jacobs. | |
| I've worked with him, and he's actually been involved in a number of NOAA programs as a highly qualified meteorologist. | ||
| He is a world expert in weather forecasting and development of models. | ||
| He was also the acting administrator in the previous Trump administration. | ||
| So the really good news is he comes in with a full understanding of the agency, where all the knobs and dials are, and has a very good understanding of the full range of NOAA's mission responsibilities and specifically great familiarity with the National Weather Service. | ||
| And as I mentioned, we are covering that hearing live. | ||
| So that will be right after this program at 10 a.m. Eastern, the nomination of Dr. Neil Jacobs to head NOAA. | ||
| Here is Robert in Tampa, Florida. | ||
| Democrat, good morning, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Thanks for being there, sir. | ||
| I just have actually just a comment. | ||
| It just seems like I'm listening. | ||
| It just seems like overall the main problem is like this communication. | ||
| If they could just go ahead, I mean, even if you know something is coming, there's no such thing as a false. | ||
| I'm in Tampa, so we get called, you know, notifications all the time about possible flooding and stuff like that. | ||
| I just think that they had like more communication, more open communication, that it might help to alleviate some of these floodings and stuff like that. | ||
| I just thought it was just a comment for that. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you for my call. | ||
| Yeah, thank you, Robert. | ||
| I'll just simply say one of the statements I used to make all the time as administrator is that you can't over-communicate. | ||
| And I think that's right in line with your comment. | ||
| There needs to be very strong communication mechanisms. | ||
| Bob is a Republican in Baldwinville, Massachusetts. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I suppose someone else stole my thunder, so I'm going to have to ask a different question. | ||
| Have you ever heard of the Carboniferous Age, sir? | ||
| Yes, I have. | ||
| Okay, well, I just saw a chart the other day starting from the Carboniferous era through the Jurassic and all of it. | ||
| And today, the global warming, it's actually at the coolest it has ever been in all time. | ||
| So that's one thing I'd like to know. | ||
| How come you guys always talk about global warming? | ||
| And another thing I'd like to know is when you're taking your temperature standards for all around the globe, why are all of your thermometers set up in the middle of Concrete cities? | ||
| Because it's well known that they are. | ||
| You're recording your temperatures in the middle of the city in the hottest days of the year. | ||
| All right, let's get a response, Bob. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thank you for that, Bob. | |
| And I would say this is not the coolest period in the Earth's history, and it's certainly not the period with the lowest CO2. | ||
| There is very clear climate change. | ||
| One element of that is warming. | ||
| And your comment about where the temperature measurements are made is not correct. | ||
| Temperature measurements are made all over the world in the most remote locations, in the South Pole, in the Arctic, as well as in cities. | ||
| Now, certainly there are consequences of making measurements in concrete areas, but the temperature measurements are made all over the world, including in the ocean and in the atmosphere. | ||
| Speaking of the ocean, Buddha Rollo asks you on X about the ocean current changing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think what Buddha is alluding to is there are a lot of questions about basically the currents, especially in the North Atlantic. | |
| So without getting into all of the details, there's a big, what's called conveyor belt of circulation in the ocean. | ||
| And there are some concerns that with increased warming in the ocean, that that conveyor belt of circulation could be shut down or diminished. | ||
| And the consequences of that, many scientists are looking into that, are quite significant. | ||
| This is not likely to happen in a short amount of time. | ||
| It would happen probably over centuries, but it could result in ice-locked cities in Great Britain, for example. | ||
| But there's a lot of good research right now looking at how the circulation, especially in the Atlantic, is changing. | ||
| And NOAA is part of a global effort with many of our partners around the world in making measurements throughout the North Atlantic, the South Atlantic, and the Southern Ocean to try to get a better handle on whether that's happening and if it is, how fast. | ||
| On the Republican line in Allison Park, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Janet, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Excuse me. | |
| I feel that the primary fault with this flooding and people not being aware was the fact that some time ago, I don't know whether it was the Texas state legislature, whether it was the municipalities, but the blaring sirens were voted down. | ||
| And that would have really alerted people in time for them to get out. | ||
| They have that in Tornado Alley. | ||
| I have had a family member who lived in Tornado Alley that heard the sirens when initially they're saying, what does this mean? | ||
| Everybody's running. | ||
| That is a fault. | ||
| And your guest had alluded in redundancies. | ||
| He kind of glossed over it with a lot of other things about a siren. | ||
| And that's what they needed. | ||
| All those communications were good. | ||
| They were overstaffed as far as the meteorologists, knowing that that was going to happen. | ||
| But the one thing that was missing were the blaring sirens. | ||
| And that was voted down, which should be implemented now that this tragedy has occurred. | ||
| Yeah, Janet, thank you. | ||
| I think we're in violent agreement on that, actually. | ||
| I had indicated that I thought sirens, which worked well, as you indicated, in Tornado Alley, could have been an important contribution to the emergency warning system here. | ||
| I suspect the Texas state legislature will revisit that at this point. | ||
| But having redundant systems with sirens with electronic alerts is critical. | ||
| Let's talk to Ken in Golden Valley, Arizona, a Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I think that Texas could take a lesson from Rapid City, South Dakota, where they had a similar flood back in the 70s, I believe, where several hundred people were killed. | |
| And what they did was create a green belt through the city on Rapid Creek, which no houses were allowed to be built back within that area. | ||
| And so now that area is all a green belt. | ||
| There's no houses there. | ||
| Nothing was rebuilt. | ||
| I think the biggest problem with life lost in floods and other natural disasters in the U.S. is often just due to population increase and people building in areas where they're prone to floods. | ||
| So that's my comment. | ||
| Yeah, thank you, Ken. | ||
| And I think the comment you made is something that can be stated about, for example, coastal areas. | ||
| We see a lot more damage from hurricanes because of development. | ||
| Certainly flooding is another example. | ||
| Wildfires, now homes are being built in places that have wildfires. | ||
| So the good news there is that local governments are now more aware of how the environment needs to be taken into consideration when they're making decisions on zoning and on building codes. | ||
| So we just need to, as voters, we need to let our legislators know that the environment is an important consideration. | ||
| And this article, just for people's awareness, three dead after floods sweep away homes in New Mexico. | ||
| The governor there has declared a state of emergency for an area that was scarred by wildfires last year. | ||
| And this is, we have this on X from Ajika who says, if we continue to have diminished disaster services, what can we do to protect ourselves and our families? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it's a great question, and I ask myself that question a lot. | |
| And I think part of the answer is learn about the abilities to get these watches and warnings. | ||
| So take a minute. | ||
| If you don't have a NOAA weather radio, consider getting one. | ||
| Take a look at how your cell phone operates. | ||
| Look at the last WEA that you got and say, okay, now I understand what that is. | ||
| Make yourself the first recipient of the emergency alerts, and that would be enormously helpful. | ||
| In this case, certainly at the camp, the kids and the counselors did not have phones, so they would not have received that. | ||
| But others in the area might have been able to receive that information and communicate the threat accordingly. | ||
| So help your neighbors out. | ||
| Learn about the systems that you already have. | ||
| Let's talk to David in Chicopee, Massachusetts, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My question is this. | ||
| What makes humans think we can outthink Mother Nature? | ||
| This has been happening for years and years and years. | ||
| Mother Nature just comes down sometimes and does something with tornadoes and everything that are unexpected. | ||
| Can't get away with it. | ||
| I can't stand there blaming this one and that one and this agency. | ||
| Things happen. | ||
| Things happen that we will never ever be able to control. | ||
| So what, my question is, what makes them think they can control Mother Nature? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, your question gets to this whole issue of behavior as well. | ||
| I think we're in agreement that these things will continue to happen, and we're not suggesting that we can do things to stop tornadoes or stop these kind of floods, but we need to do two things, one of which is get as good an understanding and as long a lead time as possible on the magnitude and timing of these events. | ||
| And then as I stated a little bit earlier, understand how people behave. | ||
| Understand what they will or won't do in response to these events. | ||
| So it's complicated and we just would like to be in a situation where the kind of devastating loss we saw in Texas doesn't repeat itself. | ||
| That's Richard Spinrad, former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator and also former Commerce Undersecretary for Oceans and Atmosphere. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me, Mimi. | |
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| The AP is reporting that Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise intervened with ICE officials to get one of his constituents released from detention. | ||
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