Nothing could have stopped the rising rapids of the Guadalupe River as it flowed over the banks and into surrounding small cities, mainly in Kerr County. But rumors of delayed flood warnings and limited evacuation orders, combined with mass federal layoffs impacting departments crucial to natural disaster monitoring and response under the new administration, have led critics to wonder if more could have been done to significantly reduce fatalities.
“You're seeing the front edge of what will be a long tail of harm that has been done in a truly thoughtless fashion,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit dedicated to improving federal government departments through accountability and advocacy. “The implications for us as a country are severe.”
Stier and his team are among several organizations attempting to collect data on the effects of the mass layoffs and the overall loss of morale among civilian federal employees. According to Stier, it’s safe to say that something bad was bound to happen, though no one could have imagined a situation similar to the Central Texas flooding.
“No one is going to ever be able to show a direct causal connection,” he said. “But there's no doubt that the risks were enhanced that something would go bad. … People should learn something from this: there's an opportunity to prevent a lot of future harm. That's what we should be thinking about.”
Layoffs Lower Morale And Leave Big Gaps
Varying reports have critiqued the National Weather Service’s (NWS) response, with a few Kerr County residents saying that they did not receive any alerts. A timeline of the NWS alerts shows 22 messages with increasing urgency before and during the flood, and the NWS has defended its response to the flood in spite of layoffs that diminished its workforce considerably.Other cuts within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have attracted criticism. The president and members of his administration have said the layoffs have little to do with the emergency communication during the flooding, but Stier disagrees.
“This is happening across the entire government architecture,” he said. “The reality is this is a deeply scary and painful, and sharp example… I'm not claiming that if the cuts and the attacks had not been done, none of this would have happened. But we surely would have had a better shot at helping more people, both to prevent any harm from happening to them and to respond more effectively.”
Hundreds of workers were placed on administrative leave at the NOAA and NWS, working out to only a few employees at each office spread across the country, but Stier says even just a few vacancies can have damning effects on the overall efficacy of agencies. Now, not only are agencies understaffed and tasked with paying promised buyouts, but the remaining employees are dealing with demoralization.
“Especially in organizations that have been strapped for resources for a while, you don't need that many gaps to have real consequences,” he said. “The unnecessary distractions that have been taking place for the last five-plus months are deeply damaging to the ability of these people to focus on what they want to focus on, which is serving the public. It's terrible management.”
When We Need The Government
Some departments, including the NWS, had employees reinstated after they were laid off. But Stier says reinstatement isn’t the solution to the grander problem. Though no one wants to see another tragedy, continued turmoil as departments struggle to stay afloat is inevitable.“I think it does get worse,” Stier said. “The longer and the deeper these cuts occur, the greater the risk and the greater the damage that will be done.”
President Donald Trump and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt have deflected any questions about how the layoffs impacted the flood management.
“That was an act of God,” Leavitt said to reporters. “It’s not the administration’s fault that the flood hit when it did. But there were early and consistent warnings, and again, the National Weather Service did its job.”
Trump described the flood as a “once-in-a-100-years” event, but Stier says it is anomalies like these when a properly staffed federal government is necessary.
“The truth of the matter is that whether it's a once-in-a-lifetime event, that's actually when government is most relevant and when government needs to be there. It's frankly not an excuse.”
