By Courtney Rozen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Senate’s top Democrat on Monday asked a government watchdog to investigate whether cuts at the National Weather Service affected the forecasting agency’s response to catastrophic and deadly flooding in Central Texas.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer asked the Department of Commerce’s acting inspector general Monday to probe whether staffing vacancies at the NWS’s San Antonio office contributed to “delays, gaps, or diminished accuracy” in forecasting the flooding. He asked the watchdog to scrutinize the office’s communications with Kerr County officials.
The NWS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Schumer’s letter. It defended its forecasting and emergency management before, during and after the flood, in a statement Sunday.
A top three leadership role at the NWS’s San Antonio office has been vacant since earlier this year after Paul Yura, the U.S. forecasting agency’s warning coordination meteorologist for San Antonio, accepted an offer from the Trump administration to retire.
Yura’s role was to form relationships with local emergency managers and officials, with the goal of building trust in the community before disaster strikes.
DOGE, the Trump administration’s cost-cutting effort, has been pushing the NWS to cut jobs. It gave hundreds of employees the option to retire early, rather than face potential dismissal.
The NWS’s San Antonio office is responsible for forecasting the area’s weather, collecting climate data and warning the public about dangerous conditions. Texas officials criticized the NWS over the weekend, arguing it failed to warn the public about impending danger.
The office sent a stream of flash flood warnings on Thursday and Friday across the digital and radio services it uses to communicate with public safety professionals, according to alert records. The messages grew increasingly urgent in the early morning hours on Friday. The team sent an emergency text message to area cell phones at about 1:14 a.m., calling it a “dangerous and life-threatening situation.”
Phones must have reception or be near a cell tower to receive that message, said Antwane Johnson, former director of FEMA’s public alert team. Mobile coverage is spotty in areas around the Guadalupe River, according to Federal Communications Commission records last updated in December.
“Even though those messages were issued, it does not mean it got to the people who needed them,” said Erik Nielsen, who studies extreme rain at Texas A&M University.
The death toll from the catastrophic floods reached at least 78 on Sunday, including at least 28 children. It is not clear whether the opening for a warning coordination meteorologist contributed to NWS’s forecasting and alerts.
Jon Zeitler, the office’s science and operations officer, also left NWS’s San Antonio office around the same time in April, according to his LinkedIn profile. Zeitler was responsible for training new hires. Reuters could not confirm why he exited. The office’s other management roles are filled, according to its website.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday was asked by reporters about whether federal government cuts hobbled the disaster response or left key job vacancies at the NWS under Trump’s oversight.
“They didn’t,” Trump told reporters prior to boarding Air Force One in Morristown, New Jersey.
(Reporting by Courtney Rozen in Washington; Additional reporting by Nathan Howard in Morristown, New Jersey, and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Aurora Ellis)
